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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30065922">on the cold and calm mountainside</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/earthquaker/pseuds/earthquaker'>earthquaker</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Adam Parrish's Teaching Kink, Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Fluff, Hijinks &amp; Shenanigans, Humor, M/M, Minor Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, Skiing, Smut, Vacation</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 18:02:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>25,382</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30065922</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/earthquaker/pseuds/earthquaker</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“We’re all about to go on what could potentially be a very romantic ski trip,” Henry points out, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.<br/>Blue frowns. “Nothing says romance like being trapped halfway up a mountain with the guy you’ve been pining after for years, and four of your emotionally-invested friends.”<br/>Henry waves her off. “But think of the potential! It’ll be like Wham’s Last Christmas music video.”<br/>“Are you suggesting… orchestrating romance?”<br/>Henry excitedly bangs his hand on the table again. “Exactly!”</p><p>The gangsey goes on a ski trip, and Blue and Henry aren't the only ones with secret plans...</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>242</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>on the cold and calm mountainside</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic started out as a little drabble on Tumblr, written because it was snowing and I missed skiing... And now it's this monster. This is pure light hearted, fun fluff, with just a bit of smut for good measure! I hope you enjoy it!!!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“<em>So</em>,” Henry says, dramatically, slapping both of hands down on the kitchen table. Blue likes the sound of that <em>so; </em>more often than not it precedes something exciting from Henry. “Since Parrish moved back to DC, has anything happened between him and Lynch?”</p><p>“Not to my knowledge,” Blue says as she pours out the margaritas. “Gansey says they’ve been doing stuff just the two of them, though. I didn’t have any limes, so I made these with lemon. Same thing, right?”</p><p>“Lemon margaritas it is,” Henry says, and he clinks his glass against Blue’s. “So they’ve been hanging out alone… But Gansey doesn’t think anything romantic has happened?”</p><p>“No. And why do you care all of a sudden, it’s not like you have to listen to either of them pine like Gansey or I do.”</p><p>“That is true. But I’m concerned for your sake. And theirs. They’re ruining the vibes of the group with their desperate pining. Clearly whatever you’re telling them, it isn’t working.”</p><p>“<em>Vibes?</em>” Blue raises an eyebrow and sips her drink. “Communication has never been their strength.”</p><p>“Which brings me to my plan.”</p><p>“You have a plan?” Blue is very intrigued by this. Henry’s plans are dramatic, exciting, and always end either with glitter, hysterical laughter, alcohol, or a combination of all three.</p><p>“We’re all about to go on what could potentially be a very romantic ski trip,” Henry points out, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.</p><p>Blue frowns. “Nothing says romance like being trapped halfway up a mountain with the guy you’ve been pining after for years, and four of your emotionally-invested friends.”</p><p>Henry waves her off. “But think of the potential! It’ll be like Wham’s Last Christmas music video.”</p><p>“Are you suggesting… orchestrating romance?”</p><p>Henry excitedly bangs his hand on the table again. “Exactly!”</p><p>“Exactly what?” Gansey comes into the kitchen then, and he presses a kiss to the side of Blue’s head. “Are you drinking margaritas?”</p><p>“Yeah, do you want one?”</p><p>“It’s one in the afternoon.”</p><p>“Five o’clock somewhere!” Henry says, cheerily.</p><p>“I suppose. I’m okay though, thank you.” Gansey politely declines the cocktail Henry is holding out to him.</p><p>“How many bedrooms does the cabin have, Gansey?” Blue asks. She wants to get this plan in action, and she wants to get Gansey on board with it. Maybe it would help if he had a margarita.</p><p>“Uh, three. We could’ve got one with more, but you said—”</p><p>“That we didn’t need that many, yes I remember.” Blue smirks at Henry. “And only one of those rooms has twin beds.”</p><p>Henry gasps, theatrically. “And there was only one bed!”</p><p>Gansey’s frowning, his thumb pressed to his bottom lip. “I hope you’re not thinking of rushing them.”</p><p>“They’d be sharing a room anyway!” Blue says, pleased with how quickly Gansey’s caught on. “Henry’s just thinking that we should… give them a couple more nudges.”</p><p>“Subtle nudges,” Henry adds.</p><p>“I’m not reassured,” Gansey says. “I didn’t realise subtle was something you knew how to be.” He means it with love, but Henry still looks affronted.</p><p>“<em>Anyway</em>,” Blue says, dragging the word out long. “It’s not like the nudges won’t be there. <em>You’re </em>the one that insisted the cabin have a hot tub.”</p><p>“Well, that’s because learning to ski can be very strenuous on your muscles and I wanted to do something nice for you, and—”</p><p>“And he’s pre-empting you being mad when he can’t teach you to ski,” Henry finishes for him.</p><p>“I still think you should just leave them to come together on their own,” Gansey insists, carefully changing the subject back. Blue suspects he’s nervous about the trip, in case she doesn’t like it. Blue’s decided to withhold judgement until they’re actually on the trip. She thinks it’s very magnanimous of her, first of all to agree to this rich-people pastime, and second of all for her not to judge it until she’s tried it.</p><p>“We’ve been waiting since high school. You should at least <em>lead </em>the horse to water, even if you can’t make it drink.”</p><p>“Yeah Gansey-boy, don’t you want Lynch and Parrish to bang out their problems?” Henry says. Blue rolls her eyes; trust Henry to ruin her intellectual argument. She almost had Gansey on side there.</p><p>“I… honestly don’t know how to answer that. I get where you’re coming from though, Jane.”</p><p>“Operation Last Christmas,” Blue says, with a grin.</p><p>“It’s February,” Gansey points out.</p><p>“Yes, but the aesthetic!” Henry cries. “Last Christmas, but without the heartache and the bad 80s hair!”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It’s grey and overcast when they arrive at the cabin, but there are lights on inside, and it looks warm and inviting. It’s snowing heavily, the sky pearly white above them, and Blue’s already anticipating how miserable it’s going to be getting all their stuff out of the car. She just wants to be inside, in from the cold.</p><p>It’s not really Blue’s preferred idea of a vacation; skiing is the kind of activity rich people who don’t exhaust themselves at work do on vacation. But she’s here, and she’s going to make an attempt to learn to ski for Gansey, and if it doesn’t work out, a few days in a cabin reading and crocheting by the fire are more her speed anyway.</p><p>The tiny town they had driven through on the way up looked inviting as well, lights twinkling in the windows like it had never stopped being Christmas, ski shops, bars and restaurants lining the streets, people bundled up in brightly coloured clothing spilling out onto the streets, laughing into the snowy night. Maybe it won’t be that bad.</p><p>There’s a small, enclosed porch that they all huddle into to bang snow off of their boots and brush off their coats. Gansey opens a cupboard door and he and Noah pile all the ski equipment they’d brought with them into it.</p><p>Inside the cabin, low couches and armchairs cluster around an open fireplace and the wooden beams of the ceiling reach high above them. Opposite the front door, great windows look out onto undisturbed blankets of white, and Blue watches as snowflakes flutter past the window in slow motion.</p><p>The room is open plan, and in the kitchen to her left, Ronan is opening cabinet doors as if he’s looking for something, and slamming them closed as if the bang had been the thing he was looking for. Adam’s leaning against the dining table, a monstrous slab of raw wood given purpose, and watching Ronan slam the doors. Blue wonders if he’s going to tell Ronan to quit it, or if they’re all waiting for Gansey for that.</p><p>“Noah and I are having the room with twin beds. I can’t share with someone, it disturbs my sleep cycle,” Henry announces, dumping his bag on one of the plaid armchairs.</p><p>“You don’t mind sharing with Ronan, do you Adam?” Blue asks him.</p><p>Adam glances at Ronan, who has stopped his investigation of the kitchen. He has his face turned away from Blue though, so she can’t see his reaction.  “No, course not,” Adam says, casually. He doesn’t even give her the look she’s expecting; the one that says <em>I know what you’re trying to do.</em> He just keeps looking at Ronan, as if something particularly funny has just happened. “We’ll take the other queen; Lynch can sleep on the floor.”</p><p>“Hey!” Ronan says. “Maybe you’ll sleep on the floor.”</p><p>Adam’s only response to that is to snort, and he wanders off from the main room, down a hallway that Blue expects leads to the bedrooms. Ronan follows after him, without saying anything else. Operation Last Christmas is go.</p><p>Blue stands and watches the snow falling for just a little longer. There’s a patio just on the other side of the windows, a cluster of deck chairs stacked on it, and, she rolls her eyes, the hot tub. Beyond that, the tree line begins abruptly; thick, dark green pines ascending up the mountain. Blue can’t see the top; it’s swallowed by thick, white clouds.</p><p>Gansey comes up behind her, slides his arms around her waist and kisses the back of her neck. “It’s nice right? Do you like it?” he asks.</p><p>“Yeah, it’s lovely.” She tips her head back so it rests on Gansey’s shoulder, and she can almost see his face. “We’ll have to kick those idiots out one day this week, have the place to ourselves for a bit,” Blue says, smirking.</p><p>“I would very much like that,” Gansey says, and he kisses her softly. It’s a good kiss, and Blue’s about to suggest they go and find their bedroom, when Gansey says, “Speaking of those idiots. You and Henry aren’t still planning your little… scheme, are you?”</p><p>“You mean operation Last Christmas? Look, they would have had to share a room anyway, and <em>Ronan’s</em> the one who said he’ll teach Adam to ski, we didn’t even have to do anything to make that happen.”</p><p>“I know. I’m just concerned about what else you have planned. You know what I think. You can’t force them to do anything, and I don’t think you should. It’ll happen when they’re both ready, or they’ll both move on.”</p><p>Blue sighs. “Let’s go unpack our things and then I guess I’d better hire some skis. Believe it or not, I actually don’t want to spend this entire trip wondering if Adam and Ronan are ever going to kiss.”</p><p>*</p><p>“Oh no, Parrish. You’ve got to share a room with me,” Ronan says, dumping his bag on the floor, with a dull thud, and a clank that Adam finds suspicious.</p><p>Adam’s already unpacking, moving neatly folded clothes from his suitcase into the wooden chest of drawers. He rolls his eyes at Ronan’s comment and sarcastically says, “Damn, my trip is ruined.”</p><p>Ronan grins, sharply, flopping backwards onto the bed, next to Adam’s bag, making the mattress bounce. “I think that it worked out well.”</p><p>“Worried you’d have to share with Henry, were you?” Adam laughs. Ronan flips him off. “Does the door lock?”</p><p>Ronan rolls off the bed enough to swing his leg out and kick his bag against it. “Does now.” His shirt rides up slightly as he stretches back out on the bed, arms pillowed behind his head. Adam can’t help looking at that exposed strip of skin, or the way Ronan’s arm muscles are flexed. He knows Ronan’s caught him looking too. Adam swallows, and turns his attention back to unpacking.</p><p>“Stop doing that, you can do it later,” Ronan says.</p><p>“Some of us would rather not live out of a badly packed duffle bag for a week.”</p><p>“But you’ve got better things you could be doing right now,” Ronan says, and Adam doesn’t even need to look at him to know he’s got a shit-eating grin on his face.</p><p>Adam counts his socks into the drawer and doesn’t remark on Ronan’s <em>better things</em>. “Have you told Gansey yet?” he asks, as he puts his empty suitcase away in the bottom of the wardrobe. Ronan’s rolled onto his side, and he’s not grinning anymore, just watching Adam carefully as he stretches out next to Ronan on the bed.</p><p>Ronan doesn’t answer his question. He pulls Adam closer to him and kisses him. He’s gentle at first, but when Adam kisses back, Ronan responds by kissing him harder and deeper. They roll on the bed until Adam’s beneath Ronan, his weight pressing Adam into the mattress. It’s good, it’s so good, but Adam needs an answer before they carry on.</p><p>“Well?” he asks.</p><p>Ronan looks at him, confused for a second, before understanding dawns on his face. “Not yet,” he says. “I will, I want to. It just needs to be the right time.”</p><p>“You mean at the time that’s the most inconvenient for him?”</p><p>“Exactly.”</p><p>“Do you think that we should--” Adam hesitates, cautious of how Ronan might take this. Ronan’s looking at him intently. Sometimes, looking at Ronan’s intense face is like looking directly at the sun, so Adam shuts his eyes and says, “Wait?”</p><p>“Wait for what? I’m already waiting for when me and him get lost back-country skiing.”</p><p>Adam’s eyes snap open at that. “That’s cruel. I meant more that it’s only been a week or so since we decided we were going to try <em>this</em>.” Adam clenches his fists in Ronan’s shirt. “I kind of feel like if we tell everyone, it’s putting a lot of pressure on it to work and—”</p><p>“You don’t think it’s going to work?” Ronan says, suddenly serious. He runs his fingers through Adam’s hair, and his face is so close to Adam’s, so open and earnest in a way that he never thought Ronan could be. Something coiled tightly inside Adam, unwinds.</p><p>“Fuck off, that’s not what I meant. You <em>know </em>we’re not the only people invested in this relationship. We’re going to be with them for a whole week, do you really want the interrogation about me and you, about how this happened, to go on for that long, without an escape?”</p><p>“Fuck no. But if we don’t tell them, I can’t kiss you for a whole week.” To prove his point, Ronan kisses Adam’s jaw.</p><p>Adam laughs. “Why are you kissing me in front of them anyway?”</p><p>“Okay, that’s a no on the PDA.”</p><p>“You hate PDA too. We’re getting off topic,” Adam says. Ronan settles lower on the bed, so his head is on Adam’s chest. Their legs are tangled together. “Nothing’s changed between us really, we just have sex now.”</p><p>“I dare you to phrase it like that to Gansey when we do tell him.”</p><p>“Oh God, can you imagine?” Adam laughs. “I’m not saying that I’m not sure. You know I am. I’m just saying that I want some more time where we’re the only ones who know. More time that this is <em>ours</em>, without everyone’s… opinions all over it.”</p><p>“You’re asking me to keep this a secret from Gansey?” Ronan lifts his head to raise an eyebrow at Adam.</p><p>“Don’t say that like you’ve never had secrets from him before, asshole.”</p><p>Ronan huffs a laugh. “What am I supposed to do if he asks me about it?”</p><p>“How often does he ask you about your relationship with me?”</p><p>“Well not in so many words. Wait, no. In more.”</p><p>“Does it go something like, “have you stopped pining yet?””</p><p>“Sargent?”</p><p>“Hmm. If she asks me this week, I’m gonna tell her yes.”</p><p>“Oh yeah?”</p><p>“Yeah, I’m so over you,” Adam teases.</p><p>“Under me more like,” Ronan whispers, and then they’re kissing again, twisting in the sheets on the bed.</p><p>  </p><p>Much later, after they’ve been into the town to hire skis and eat dinner, Adam’s lying in bed in the dark and his legs are tangled with Ronan’s under the sheets. In the dark, Ronan reaches for his hand and their fingers lock together.</p><p>“I’m glad we sorted our shit out before we came on this trip,” Ronan says. “This would’ve been fucking awful if we hadn’t. To share a bed with you, wake up in the morning with you and want to kiss you, but know that I couldn’t. Would’ve fucking sucked.”</p><p>“It would’ve,” Adam agrees, and kisses Ronan’s fingers. “I would’ve wanted to, as well. I’ve wanted this for so long.”</p><p>“We had reasons.”</p><p>“I know. Can’t even remember what they were.”</p><p>“Because you—”</p><p>“That wasn’t an invitation to remind me,” Adam interrupts. “Not important anymore.”</p><p>“No. I just want you,” Ronan says.</p><p>“You’ve got me.”</p><p> </p><p>The next morning, Blue puts on her mismatched, multicoloured, mostly second hand skiing gear. It consists of four pairs of socks, two pairs of fleece lined leggings, a Henley made of fabric that looks like tiny waffles, a t-shirt with a skiing cartoon snowman that she’d found at a thrift shop, a fleece that had once belonged to Maura, hand-embroidered with a shoal of multicoloured fish, a pair of lime green ski pants and, the one thing she’d allowed Gansey to buy her in preparation for the trip, a luminous ski jacket, printed with rainbow tie-dye.</p><p>Ronan’s the only person in the kitchen when Blue slides stylishly on the wooden floor out of her room. Ronan snorts at her. He is, Blue is not surprised to see, dressed entirely in black.</p><p>“I’m surprised you’re not wearing your stupid designer jeans,” Blue says.</p><p>“I do own other clothes.”</p><p>Adam’s just closed their bedroom door behind him, and he says, “I thought you didn’t lie, Lynch. Is Gansey packing the skis in the car?”</p><p>“Yeah, he said we’ll leave in about 15 minutes,” Blue says. Adam nods at her and disappears out into the front porch. Blue watches Ronan watch him go. He looks almost wistful. Not an expression Blue thought he was capable of, but definitely a feeling she knows he feels in relation to Adam.</p><p>When the front door shuts behind Adam, Ronan turns back to her and says, “You’re gonna overheat in all those layers, Sargent.”</p><p>“And you’re going to go mad with hopeless longing,” Blue says, sweetly.</p><p>She expects Ronan to scoff and tell her to fuck off, but he just mutters <em>hopeless </em>to himself, puts his coat on, and follows Adam out the door.</p><p><em>That was weird</em>, Blue thinks. She knocks rhythmically on the door to Henry and Noah’s room. The door creaks open slightly.</p><p>“Henry, can I come in?” Blue whispers into the crack.</p><p>“Of course, my dear,” Henry replies. “Why the secrecy?”</p><p>“Something weird just happened.”</p><p>“Oh? In that case, please do come in.” Henry opens the door wider.</p><p>Blue frowns at him. “Why have you bothered to do your hair? You’re going to be wearing a helmet most of the day.”</p><p>“Ah,” Henry replies. “I am, but this way at least my hair will somewhat bounce back, and I will not embarrass myself with flat hair at any point. Except perhaps by the end of a long evening of apres-ski, and by then, hopefully, my compadres will all be too intoxicated to notice.”</p><p>“Uh huh.” Blue, who had not even bothered to attempt to clip her hair back into its usual tiny, spikey ponytail, just nods slowly at him. She’s tied a bandana around her head instead, to keep her hair off her face, and it too is rainbow tie dye, to match her coat. There are only so many concessions she’s willing to make to her aesthetic.</p><p>“You mentioned a weird thing?” Henry prompts.</p><p>“Oh, yes!” Blue recounts her brief conversation with Ronan, the way he’d looked at Adam, and his reaction to her joke.</p><p>“Perhaps he thinks the situation is not as hopeless as we joke that it is. Perhaps, Mr Lynch has his own <em>Operation Last Christmas </em>in place. He may plan to seduce Mr Parrish with his skiing lessons.”</p><p>The volume of Blue’s startled laugh surprises even her. “Oh man,” she says. “And we all know about Adam’s teacher kink.”</p><p>“We may not need to put so much effort into our little plan after all,” Henry agrees.</p><p>*</p><p>When they arrive at the slopes, Gansey tries to herd them all towards the nursery slope. Ronan's not having that.</p><p>It's not that he's not worried about Adam getting hurt, he just thinks that the best way to learn is to <em>have</em> to learn as opposed to sliding gracelessly down the same 5 metres of gentle slope over and over. Besides, he knows Adam's a fast learner, there's no reason he shouldn't master this straight away.</p><p>He tells Adam as much on the chairlift to the top of the mountain. Adam's biting his lip and nodding along, his cheeks pink from the cold.</p><p>At the top, Adam dismounts the chairlift without falling on his ass. Win.</p><p>"Okay, so what you've gotta do is make a plough shape with your skis, so you’re on the edge of them, and then just slide like that. And if you want to turn, put your weight on your uphill leg and just- Parrish are you even listening to me?"</p><p>He asks, because Adam is biting his lip again and he's looking a little glassy eyed.</p><p>"What? Yeah of course. I just..." Adam makes a face then that Ronan has learnt recently to be very excited for. The exception, it turns out, it's when they're at the top of a ski slope.</p><p>"Seriously? Now is not the time."</p><p>Adam looks sheepish at being caught out. "I know, I'm listening. Snow plough, got it."</p><p>"Yeah. Avoid the steep bits."</p><p>"Any more advice?"</p><p>"If you get to the bottom without breaking any bones, I'll blow you, okay?"</p><p>At that, Adam gets a steely determined look on his face, and shuffles carefully off the top of the slope. Ronan watches him go; his legs are fixed in a steady snowplough shape, but he’s wobbling a little, like a baby deer on ice. He goes pretty well though, perpendicular across the slope, until he tries to turn.</p><p>Ronan flinches as he watches Adam lift his downhill leg too much, put it back down at the wrong angle, cross his skis and fall over. Adam gets back up easily enough on his own though, and the next time he tries the turn, he makes it.</p><p>And then he turns the other direction and promptly falls over again.</p><p>Ronan meanders the few metres across the slope that Adam has covered. “You’re doing good,” he tells him. Supportive boyfriend is a new role for Ronan, but it’s one he’s very happy to play.</p><p>Ronan can’t see Adam’s eyes properly, with his reflective ski goggles on, but he knows an Adam Parrish eye roll when he sees one.</p><p>“You didn’t think you were gonna be perfect straight away did you?”</p><p>“Why not?” Adam says. And here we go, Adam Parrish has to be good at everything. He gets back to his feet, and points his skis slightly more downhill than he’d been going before. “Is it easier if I build up more speed?”</p><p>“Yes, but it’ll hurt a fuck load more when you inevitably land on your face.” Ronan’s really nailing this supportive boyfriend thing.</p><p>Adam skis a near-perfect arc around Ronan anyway. And then falls on his ass again.</p><p>“You need to lean forwards more. You’re sticking your ass out.”</p><p>“Maybe if I had a better teacher,” Adam retorts.</p><p>“You want a better teacher, then by all means, go to the ski school. But I can promise you, their rewards program is not as good as mine,” Ronan says, sliding down the slope to pull Adam up. Adam’s downhill ski slides on some loose snow, and he falls more into Ronan, but Ronan keeps them both upright.</p><p>Adam smiles at him, warm and wide, and it makes Ronan’s gut clench. He can’t kiss him right now, helmets and goggles and coats are in the way, but he settles for resting his head against Adam’s helmet.</p><p>“Push your shins into the front of your boots. Bend your knees. Don’t stick your ass out,” Ronan tells him, and damn, Adam’s got that look on his face again.</p><p>He nods though, and Ronan lets him go to ski again. He manages five whole turns connected together, before he falls this time.</p><p>The only reason he falls is because he gets stuck on a bump in the middle of the piste that he doesn’t have the speed to get over. Ronan watches him slide up it, teeter at the top and then slide backwards down it. He ends up in an awkward split, face first in the snow.</p><p>Ronan’s really keen to find out how Adam’s gonna get himself out of this. He skis down to Adam and stops just above him, spraying him with snow. Yeah, he’s a great boyfriend.</p><p>“Asshole,” Adam says, from under the snow drift that Ronan’s buried him in. He rolls away from Ronan down the slope and gets his feet back under him.</p><p>“See, that was good.”</p><p>Adam looks at him witheringly.</p><p>“Now you’ve gotta build up speed. Straighten your skis between each turn.”</p><p>“This is going to end badly,” Adam says, but he starts moving again anyway.</p><p>“That’s the attitude!” Ronan calls after him.</p><p>It doesn’t actually go too badly, until it does. Ronan doesn’t even see how Adam falls this time, one second he’s skiing perfectly fine, the next he’s sprawled in the snow again, head pointing downhill, one of his skis lying a few feet uphill of him.</p><p>Ronan picks up the stray ski on his way to Adam. “You’re facing the wrong way.”</p><p>“If I take my skis off and walk down, do I still get that blow job?” Adam asks, making no move to get up.</p><p>“No, because it will take you hours to walk down this mountain and by the time you get to the bottom, I’ll be drunk.”</p><p>“It’s going to take me hours anyway, at this rate,” Adam says, before he swings his legs around so he can stand.</p><p>“Maybe, but if you actually try and ski, I won’t leave you.” Ronan pauses. “Besides, watching you wipe out every five minutes is hilarious.”</p><p>“That was so nice and then you had to go and ruin it.”</p><p>“Don’t complain. You knew what you were getting into. What was the problem that time? You were doing well.” Ronan passes Adam his other ski and helps him get it back on.</p><p>“I was going too fast.”</p><p>“No such thing. Just turn harder up the hill to slow down.”</p><p>“I could’ve figured that out myself.”</p><p>“Why didn’t you though, science boy?”</p><p>Adam flips him off.</p><p> </p><p>By the time they make it to the bottom, the frequency of Adam’s falls has decreased and he’s building up speed with more confidence.</p><p>“When you get to the end of that tree line, stop turning, point your skis downhill and just go flat out. Fast as you can, don’t turn.”</p><p>“Uhh, why?”</p><p>“So that you’ve got enough speed to get all the way along that last flat bit and then all the way out to where Gansey is without having to miserably push yourself with your poles.”</p><p>Ronan stays still and watches Adam until he gets to the point where he should stop turning. When he’s sure that Adam is going to be fine, Ronan skis as fast as he can down the rest of the slope. Adam’s just one of many blurs that he passes.</p><p>He finds Noah and Henry standing at the bottom of the nursery slope. “How’s it going?” He asks them.</p><p>Noah jerks a gloved thumb up to where Gansey and Blue are standing halfway down the slope. Blue’s gesturing manically at Gansey with her ski pole.</p><p>“How’s it going teaching Adam? I imagine he hasn’t told you you’re a condescending, bourgeois fuck,” Henry says, cheerfully.</p><p>“Is that the problem?”</p><p>“I think the problem is that Blue thinks the skis are too long for her,” Noah says.</p><p>“They don’t do skis short enough,” Ronan says, even though jokes about Blue’s height are only funny when she’s around to hear them. “I see you two aren’t helping.”</p><p>“Can’t teach someone to ski when you’re on a snowboard,” Noah says.</p><p>“Yes, you can,” Ronan points out. “You’re just scared of her.”</p><p>“She’s literally armed. I’ve already seen her weaponize a ski pole once today,” Henry says. “Gansey’s a brave man.”</p><p>“Seriously where is Adam?” Noah changes the subject.</p><p>Ronan looks over his shoulder, back the way he came to where Adam is, of course, miserably pushing himself along with his ski poles.</p><p>Once he’s in earshot, Ronan shouts, “I told you to go as fast as you could!”</p><p>“I did!” Adam shouts back.</p><p>“Well next time go faster.”</p><p>“You took him down that green run? Already?” Noah says.</p><p>“He survived. It’s like teaching babies to swim, you’ve gotta just throw ‘em in the deep end.”</p><p>“If I ever have children,” Henry says. “Remind me never to leave them with you.”</p><p>“You really think you’ll need reminding of that?” Adam says, as he staggers to a stop. He’s taking off his helmet and there’s sweat beading along his hairline. The sight of it reminds Ronan of the last time he’d seen sweat on Adam’s brow like that.  </p><p>“Did Lynch’s deep end technique work though?” Noah asks, innocuously enough.</p><p>Adam splutters, and covers it up with a cough. Ronan’s mind is already on sex, and a plethora of dirty jokes rise to the surface. He wonders if he’d have made one if this conversation had happened before Adam was his boyfriend. It’s already hard to remember how he acted around Adam <em>before.</em></p><p>“It did,” Adam says, calmly. He glances at Ronan from the corner of his eye, a dark look like he’s having the same dirty thoughts. Ronan would drag him back to the car now if he could. Fuck skiing, there’s a bed back at the cabin that Ronan would very much like to lay Adam out on, and work on some other techniques.</p><p>“Go ski down that, Parrish,” Ronan says, gesturing at the slope that Blue and Gansey are still arguing on. Maybe a bit of distance between them will slow the arousal that’s spreading through him.</p><p>As Adam heads over to the lift, Henry says, “If he can ski already, Blue’s gonna kill him.”</p><p>“Or you,” Noah says.</p><p>“Or Gansey,” Ronan adds.</p><p>Adam skis very slowly down to where Blue and Gansey are, but he doesn’t fall. Ronan feels ridiculously proud, wants to turn to Henry and Noah and say, ‘<em>that’s my boyfriend.’ </em>But he doesn’t. The fact that he bribed Adam into learning to ski with a blow job is going to have to remain a secret, hilarious as it is.</p><p>Ronan watches Gansey throw his arms exasperatedly into the air and then ski down towards him, leaving Blue and Adam talking to each other on the slope.</p><p>“Not going well?” Ronan says.</p><p>“I don’t know what she wants me to do! I even offered to pay for ski lessons from the ski school and that made her even angrier! How did you teach Adam that quickly?”</p><p>Ronan shrugs. “It’s Parrish. Threw him down the green. It’s basically fucking flat, and it’s more interesting than going up and down this thing with all the kids.”</p><p>Blue and Adam are moving again. Blue’s trying to go too fast already, her skis cross, and she falls. Next time, her downhill legs skids too far out. She makes it to the bottom though, only falling twice more though.</p><p>Ronan’s feeling smug, until Adam gets within a few feet of the group at the bottom. That’s when they simultaneously realise the flaw in Ronan’s teaching method.</p><p>“You didn’t teach me to stop!” Adam shouts as he crashes into a pile of abandoned skis and snowboards.</p><p>“You’ve managed it just fine,” Ronan says, as Adam pulls himself out of the tangle.</p><p>“I’d prefer a less painful method.”</p><p>Blue actually manages to bring herself to a slightly unsteady snowplough stop. Ronan concedes that point to Gansey’s teaching method.</p><p>“You.” Blue points her ski pole at Ronan.</p><p>“What?” He bats the pole away from his face.</p><p>“You’re going to teach me like you taught Adam.”</p><p>“I’ve got a very unique way of motivating Parrish though,” Ronan tells her.</p><p>Behind him, Adam covers his laughter with a fit of coughing.</p><p>*</p><p>On the chairlift back to the top of the green run, Adam turns to Ronan and says, “I hope you’re not offering Blue the same rewards program as me.”</p><p>He’s obviously joking, but Ronan makes a face that can only be described as absolutely horrified. “Why would you even suggest that?”</p><p>Adam laughs at the outraged look on Ronan’s face, but then Ronan says, “Could suggest it to Gansey though.”</p><p>“Wait, no. You can’t!”</p><p>“Why not?”</p><p>“What are you gonna say to him? ‘Oh I offered to suck Parrish’s dick if he got to the bottom without breaking any bones, maybe you should motivate Blue in a similar way?’”</p><p>“I think you should give me a little more credit. Obviously, I won’t say the first part.”</p><p>Adam shrugs. He contemplates the snow covered treetops they pass by. “What am I gonna get this time?” he asks, cheekily.</p><p>“If you make it to the bottom without falling over?” Ronan looks at him, eyes the same blazing blue as the sky above them, and his cheeks pink from the cold. It’s so unfair, that he can look that good all the time, like he’s walked out of an advert for ski apparel. “What do you want?”</p><p>Adam’s distracted, so he almost misses the question. He smirks, “I get a choice, do I?”</p><p>“Yeah, but you’ve gotta ski properly. Make an effort. None of that old man skiing.”</p><p>“How many tries do I get?” There’s no way he’ll make it without falling <em>and </em>put in effort, at least not the first time.</p><p>“Depends on what you’re asking for.”</p><p><em>Oh, </em>Adam knows what he wants. He can feel his cheeks and ears burning, but he says it anyway. “I wanna eat you out.”</p><p>“Fuck. You can’t just say things like that.” Ronan’s face gets redder, and he grins wickedly.</p><p>“So how many tries do I get?”</p><p>“Jesus, as many as you need.”</p><p>Adam’s cheeks hurt from smiling. They’re nearly at the top now, and he can see Henry and Noah already waiting at the top of the slope. They’re easy to spot, because Henry’s ski pants are hot pink and his coat is neon yellow. The snow around them glitters in the sunlight.</p><p>At the top, Ronan clips his helmet back up. Adam was surprised, earlier, that he actually bothered to wear one, but when he saw how fast Ronan covered the last section of the slope, he decided not to question it.</p><p>“Race you to the bottom, Lynch?” Noah says.</p><p>“Next time. I gotta get Sargent to forget all Gansey’s bad advice.”</p><p>Adam thinks he’s probably also not racing Noah because of him, but he swallows the guilty feeling. The thing is, he doesn’t want Ronan to leave him, but he doesn’t want to ruin his enjoyment of the trip either. If Ronan knew what was going on his head, he’d laugh at him.</p><p>“Stop worrying about it, Parrish,” Ronan says. <em>Fuck.</em></p><p>Blue and Gansey have joined them at the top of the slope now too, and Blue’s looking warily down it.</p><p>“It doesn’t look that bad,” she says.</p><p>“It’s not, and there’s a bit that weaves through the trees that you’ll like,” Adam says, trying to be reassuring. He doesn’t tell Blue that right before that part, there’s a steep corner that he’d abandoned his dignity on, sliding down on his bum instead of trying to ski. He’s not looking forward to trying that part again.</p><p>“I think this is a case of too many cooks,” Henry says, and he skis off without another word. Noah at least has the grace to look guilty before he follows Henry on his snowboard.</p><p>“Cowards,” Ronan mutters. “The first bit’s fine, Sargent, it’s not any steeper than the slope you were on earlier. It gets a bit steep round that corner, but if you pick a line that runs across the slope and when you turn, turn into it hard.”</p><p>Adam zones out from the rest of what Ronan’s saying. Today has reawakened a long forgotten memory inside of Adam: watching Ronan at the front of their Latin classroom, trying to imagine what he’d be like as a teacher and finding it impossible. As it turns out, a classroom was the wrong setting for trying to imagine Ronan as a teacher.</p><p>Adam’s got some thinking to do. Later though, right now he’s going to learn to ski. Adam slides off the top of the slope, doesn’t look back at the others, and he tries to keep Ronan’s lessons in his head without getting distracted by the fact they came from, of all people, Ronan.</p><p>Adam manages a few turns, just slowly, connecting them together in a meandering line down the shallowest part of the slope.</p><p>Adam thinks he’s doing pretty well, for his first day of skiing. He’s building his confidence with it and with every turn he gets a little bit faster. He’s starting to see the appeal too, why people bother to come on these trips, despite the physical exertion. It’s fun, and the rhythm of it and the sound of the snow beneath his skis is calming.</p><p>He comes to a stop at the edge of the piste, just before the steep corner and looks back up the slope. Ronan’s much further up the slope that he thought he would be by now, with Blue and Gansey still. Adam’s trying not to feel too smug about picking this up quicker than her. Whatever Ronan’s telling her though, it seems to be better than whatever Gansey was doing before.</p><p>Adam skis off again, not waiting for Ronan before he tries the steep corner. He manages it fine at first, speed carefully under his control. There’s a second though, where he thinks, <em>hmm, maybe I am going a little too fast,</em> and in that second, he loses his rhythm, and before he’s even registered what’s happening, his head is smacking off the ice.</p><p>Pain sings through his head, and sparks fly behind his eyes. Adam’s ears are ringing, and he screws his eyes up, tries to suppress the hot tears that are welling up behind his eyes. <em>It’s the shock, </em>he tells himself. He’s wearing a helmet, and he knows that it doesn’t really hurt. Not as much as the memory. It’s the same side of his head, and his ear screams. He lays on the ground, eyes tightly shut, still, and waits for the pain to fade.</p><p>He hears someone moving next to him, Adam sits up, feeling disorientated. He pulls his goggles onto the top of his helmet, and the sun reflecting off the snow is blinding. He’s surprised to see that it’s Ronan, crouching in front of him in the snow. Adam has no idea how he can have got to him so fast.</p><p>“Adam?” Ronan’s holding Adam’s head in both his hands. “You’re okay, you’re good.”</p><p>“What happened?” His skis have both come off and he can see one sticking out of the snow several feet away.</p><p>“You just lost your form and then hit some ice. You’re doing well though, hey. Look at me,” Ronan says. Adam hadn’t realised he’d looked away.</p><p>Ronan rips his gloves off with his teeth, and carefully unclips Adam’s helmet and takes it off his head. “You hit your head?”</p><p>Adam nods, he feels pathetic, but he’s glad it’s Ronan who’s with him. “Good thing you made me buy a brand new helmet instead of a second hand one.”</p><p>“I’m very safety conscious,” Ronan says, and for all that Adam knows it’s meant as a joke, he sounds serious. His hand is gentle on the side of Adam’s head, fingertips skimming over his bad ear, like he knows what memories the crash has triggered, like he’s remembering too.</p><p>“Give it back then. I’m not gonna make any progress sat on my ass.” The pain’s fading now, and Adam feels like maybe he overreacted. </p><p>Ronan glances behind himself, down the hill. Adam can see that Henry and Noah are long gone, two tiny bright specks further down the slope, indistinguishable from all the others. Above them, Gansey is helping Blue stand up. No one’s paying attention to Adam and Ronan, so when Ronan kisses him, Adam kisses back.</p><p>The kiss is slow and gentle, and it builds with the promise of more. Adam forgets all about how he ended up on his ass in the snow, and about the echoes of pain reverberating in his head. It’s so good, and Adam wants it to last forever.</p><p>Unfortunately, the kiss comes to an abrupt end when Ronan rubs a handful of snow into his hair.</p><p>“You bastard,” Adam tells him, shaking the snow out. Some of it has melted and is trickling down the back of his neck already. Adam gets as much of it out of his hair as he can, before putting his helmet back on and replacing his goggles. “I can’t believe you’d do that to me.”</p><p>Ronan’s already stood up, and as he’s clipping back into his skis, he looks down at Adam and says, “Can you really not? It’s like you don’t know me at all, Parrish.”</p><p>Adam throws a handful of snow at him as he skis away. He hadn’t noticed Ronan do it, but Adam’s skis are lying slightly downhill of him, on a flat compacted bit of snow. They’re easy to put back on, and yeah, he moves off a little slower, but by the time he gets down to where Ronan is waiting with Henry and Noah, he’s going faster again.</p><p>“That was good,” Ronan says, when Adam manages to stop without falling over. “You’re really making progress,” and damn, if they’re going to keep their relationship a secret, Ronan has really got to stop talking like that.</p><p>“How’s Blue doing?” Henry asks.</p><p>“I told her to ski like she had a point to prove,” Ronan says. “Her technique’s all over the place, but she’s falling over less.”</p><p>Adam’s going to die. This is the hottest thing that’s ever happened to him. His mind keeps providing him with unhelpful scenarios about Ronan critiquing him at other things.</p><p>Luckily, he’s saved from anymore thinking about Ronan talking about <em>technique, </em>by Blue careening around the corner, skiing like, well, like she’s got a point to prove. She’s still snowploughing, but she’s pushing hard into the turns and snow flies up behind her.</p><p>She manages to stop though, and she catapults snow into the air ahead of her, spraying the rest of them with it. Ronan grins, and fist bumps her.</p><p>“Better?” she says.</p><p>“Definitely,” Ronan agrees. “Where’s the old man?”</p><p>Adam thinks he probably only asked that as an excuse to call Gansey an old man, because Gansey is coming down the slope behind them, blue coat, orange pants, skiing in steady, precise arcs. When he joins them at the bottom, he stops neatly, parked parallel to Henry.</p><p>“Well?” Ronan says, raising an eyebrow.</p><p>“While I do think your crash course method has some merits, I was concerned at several points that it was going to be exactly that. A crash,” Gansey says, haughtily. “There’s nothing to be gained from careening about the slope like an idiot.”</p><p>“It’s fun though,” Blue says, and Adam thinks she’s probably just saved the day.</p><p>“See,” Ronan says. “She did that piss-easy green, it built her confidence, and now we can go do some actually hard runs and you can lecture about proper parallel skiing form all you like.”</p><p>Adam wonders if Ronan’s got his own version of that lecture. <em>Fuck,</em> what is wrong with him?</p><p>*</p><p>Skiing, as it turns out, is satisfying, but it’s also hard work and it’s only a few more hours, a few more goes down the green run, and one disastrous attempt at a blue, before Adam is done for the day. He’s on vacation, and it’s unreasonable to push his body this hard when he doesn’t have to.</p><p>There’s a restaurant near the nursery slope that they end up in to have food and beer. It is, or Ronan says, the real reason they even bothered to come on this trip. Anywhere else, Adam would have said the restaurant/bar was snowsports themed, but he supposes that it’s not really a theme, considering its location.</p><p>They get beers and a big plate of nachos, which get divided up between the six of them.</p><p>“Oh, I didn’t have any jalapeños on mine,” Adam says. He’s not really complaining about it, but he wanted the jalapeños.</p><p>“Here you go, I had too many.” Ronan says and he’s holding a nacho out to Adam. It’s close to Adam’s face and he doesn’t even think about it, just eats the nacho right out of Ronan’s fingers. It’s only when he’s actually got Ronan’s fingers in his mouth that he realises the mistake he’s made.</p><p>“What the fuck man?” Ronan laughs, and everyone is looking at him.</p><p>Adam chews the nacho and swallows. “I don’t know why I did that.”</p><p>Ronan laughs awkwardly again, and Adam watches Blue and Henry exchange a knowing look. He’s already concerned that they’re onto him and Ronan. Well, if they are, it’s definitely his fault. Most of his and Ronan’s behaviour towards each other hasn’t changed, but he’s ninety-five percent sure that he wouldn’t have eaten a nacho straight out Ronan’s hand even a month ago.</p><p>But then, even a month ago, he doesn’t think Ronan would have offered him the nacho like that. If Adam had said he’d wanted jalapeños, Ronan would’ve told him he wasn’t getting any of his, expletives thrown in for good measure, but then casually left some on the edge of his plate, claiming he was full.</p><p>Under the table, Ronan’s hand slides onto his knee, and he squeezes. Keeping this thing secret is going to be harder than he’d thought.</p><p>*</p><p>Ronan’s spent years always being careful about touching Adam. Always minding when and where and how he touches him. But now. Now’s he allowed to touch anywhere, everywhere; he can’t stop. Like flipping the polarity on a magnet, his hands are drawn to Adam’s skin and there’s nothing that can stop him. He’s spent the whole day doing it, subtly, a hand on Adam’s lower back as he helped load up the car, a hand on his thigh under the table in the restaurant. Little touches that have made Ronan’s palms tingle, always wanting more, more, <em>more</em>.</p><p>He’s getting more now.</p><p>Adam’s lying beneath him in the bed, and his skin is soft and golden everywhere, glowing in the lamplight. Ronan kisses a path down his chest, fits his fingers against Adam’s ribs, trails his open mouth down Adam’s sternum. Ronan presses kisses to the dip on the inside of his hip, on the soft give of Adam’s stomach, low on the line of muscle that leads down under his shorts.</p><p>“What are you doing?” Adam asks. He’s moved to sit up slightly and Ronan licks over where his stomach folds up from the angle.</p><p>“Just—” <em>loving you. </em>“—kissing you. Do you want me to stop?”</p><p>“No, don’t stop,” Adam whispers, roughly. His hands come up and run over Ronan’s head, fingertips running against the grain of his buzzed hair. The feeling sends shockwaves down his spine, making his cock twitch and his toes curl.</p><p>There’s a bruise on Adam’s right hip, from where he’d fallen hard, on some ice, and as Ronan slides Adam’s shorts down, he runs his fingers gently over it.</p><p>“It’s okay,” Adam says, needlessly, and he lifts his hips to help Ronan pull the shorts all the way off. There are more bruises forming on Adam’s legs, mostly on the inside of his knees, where he’d landed on his own skis. Ronan skims his mouth against the darkest, inside his thigh, just above his knee.</p><p>He kneels up between Adam’s legs, and looks down at him. Adam’s cock is hard, flushed and curved up towards his stomach. His knees are bent up towards his body, but spread apart to make room for Ronan between them, and Ronan can see everything. He wants to put his mouth all over Adam, on his cock, his balls. Wants to leave a wet trail between his legs down to where he knows his pink hole is hidden, just begging for Ronan’s mouth on it, tongue in it, fingers and cock thrusting inside.</p><p>Adam’s watching him with dark eyes, and he puts his hand on the side of Ronan’s face. His thumb smooths over Ronan’s cheekbone, following an invisible line to his mouth, tracing around the outline of it. Ronan kisses the pad of his thumb, and then the inside of his knee again.</p><p>“You want that blow job?” Ronan asks, smirking into Adam’s warm skin.</p><p>Adam nods. “Please,” he breathes.</p><p>Drawing it out this much was never Ronan’s intention, but he needs to kiss Adam again, needs Adam to kiss him. He leans up over him and kisses his mouth, hard and desperate. Adam groans into the kiss and he’s clearly as worked up as Ronan, despite his composure.</p><p>Ronan doesn’t break the kiss, but he reaches between them and wraps his hand around Adam’s cock. He swipes his thumb across the head, gathers up some of the wetness collected there. Adam gasps against his mouth and bucks into the touch but Ronan uses his other hand to hold his hips down, mindful of the dark bruise.</p><p>“Stop teasing me,” Adam says, but he’s smiling, almost laughing.</p><p>“Nah.” Ronan grins back at him, and kisses him one more time, before moving back down to take Adam’s cock into his mouth.</p><p>Ronan doesn’t know whether taking Adam’s cock as deep into his mouth as he can on the first go counts as teasing, but from the way Adam trips over several moans at once, Ronan doesn’t think he’ll get any complaints. He swallows around the head and then pulls almost all the way off, just keeping the tip of Adam’s cock in his mouth. He swirls his tongue around the head, presses his tongue hard into the slit and listens to Adam’s choked-off gasps. Ronan wraps a hand around the base, and then he really starts going for it, sucking hard and sliding his mouth up and down, almost ruthlessly.</p><p>His other hand is still gently keeping Adam’s hips on the bed, and he can feel the tension in Adam’s body as he tries not to thrust up into the sucking heat of Ronan’s mouth. Ronan pauses and looks up at Adam’s face, he’s got his eyes screwed shut and one hand fisted in his hair. His mouth is open though, panting, and there’s a deep flush across his cheeks and down his chest.</p><p>“You wanna come?” he asks Adam, and <em>fuck</em>, his voice is wrecked.</p><p>“Stupid question,” Adam replies, his voice not sounding much better. Ronan laughs, and rolls Adam’s balls in his hand, making Adam moan again, long and guttural.</p><p>This time, when he takes Adam’s cock back into his mouth, he lets go of his hip, lets Adam thrust up into his mouth as much as he likes. His free hand trails back between Adam’s legs and teases at his hole, massaging around the edges of it. He gets one finger slick with spit, sliding it into his mouth alongside Adam’s cock. He rubs just the tip of it inside of Adam, and the feeling of it pushes Adam over the edge. He gasps out a warning, that Ronan barely interprets as one, and then he’s coming into Ronan’s waiting mouth.</p><p>“Fuck, Ronan,” Adam says and he’s reaching for Ronan’s cock, pulling him down on top of him. Ronan cries out in relief when Adam’s hand reaches into his briefs and pulls his cock out.</p><p>“Not gonna take much,” he says, and it doesn’t. Adam licks his hand and wraps it tight around Ronan’s cock. There’s enough slick gathered at the head of his cock that combined with Adam’s spit, the slide is frictionless. Adam rubs his thumb across the head of his cock, and Ronan doesn’t know where to look. Adam’s perfect hands around his cock or Adam’s dark, blue eyes watching him like he can’t believe this is real. Ronan can’t believe it’s real either, and when Adam twists his wrist just so, he comes, almost yelling out Adam’s name.</p><p>The walls in the cabin are thin though, so, luckily, he didn’t yell out.</p><p> </p><p>Objectively, Ronan knows that two weeks into a relationship is too soon to tell someone that you love them. But this is Adam. This is Adam, and Ronan can’t remember a time when he knew him and didn’t feel some kind of gut-clenching, pulse-racing, palm-sweating emotion around him. Maybe he’d never called those emotions <em>love </em>at the time, the feeling had gone by a lot of different names. But now, lying here, watching Adam smile sleepily and settle into the bed, he knows it’s love. It’s been love for a long while. Ronan doesn’t remember the exact point when ‘<em>I love you, you’re my best friend,’</em> became ‘<em>I love you, you’re everything,’</em> but he’s sure it happened.</p><p>*</p><p>By the end of the second day of skiing, Adam still hasn’t completed a run without falling over, but he insists to Ronan that it’s because he’s pushing himself. Adam knows that he is; the way his knees scream at him when they get back to the cabin that evening is evidence.</p><p>He's not the only one that feels that way, and that’s how they all end up in the hot tub outside, towels hanging on the wooden hooks by the door, and plastic glasses of wine in their hands. The hot tub is big, but it’s still not meant for six adults. It’s just as well that Noah is sitting between him and Ronan, Adam supposes.</p><p>The steam rises off the surface of the bubbling water in lazy spirals. Noah plays with the buttons, casting them all a rainbow of lights, varying the jet intensity until Blue tells him to knock it off.</p><p>The lights stop on red. Ronan is watching him from across the pool, dark eyes made darker by the intense lighting. Adam wants to touch him. He regrets the decision now, to not tell the others about their relationship. He’s starving and he imagines that just being able to touch Ronan will be enough to satisfy the craving.</p><p>“Don’t leave it on red. It’s creepy,” Henry says.</p><p>“You’d know all about getting left on read, right Cheng?”</p><p>“Ha, ha, ha. Fuck you, Lynch.”</p><p>“Stop it,” Blue says, warning.</p><p>“Ooh, that reminds me,” Noah says. “Adam. Did you ever text that Starbucks girl?”</p><p>All eyes turn to Adam. Almost all eyes. Ronan is suddenly very interested in reading the hot tub safety rules.</p><p>“There’s a girl?” Gansey perks up, instantly.</p><p>Blue narrows her eyes. “Yeah, what girl?”</p><p>“Uhh...” Adam says, stalling. “Barista. At the Starbucks near my work. She gave me her number on Friday.”</p><p>Noah nods. “Yeah, she flirts with Adam like, every time we go in there!”</p><p>Fuck. Adam considers his escape options. Ronan’s playing with the light settings now. The lights flash red and blue and it reminds Adam of emergency vehicles. Apt.</p><p>“Does she? What’s she like? What’s her name?” Gansey sounds excited at the prospect of someone being into Adam. He tries not to let it make him feel pathetic, Gansey means well.</p><p>“Are you going to text her?” Blue sounds as annoyed as Gansey sounds excited.</p><p>“No. I’m not. I threw the cup away,” he admits. He’s not even going to try to make it sound like he regrets it. He’s not that committed to hiding his actual relationship.</p><p>“Why?” Henry asks. He exchanges a look with Blue and Adam interprets it as, <em>I think we all know why.</em> Right now, he’s very relieved that they actually don’t. Blue and Henry being unbearable because of his stupid crush on Ronan is better than them being unbearable because he’s finally dating Ronan. Maybe.</p><p>“She is cute,” Noah says.</p><p>“Well why don’t you date her then?” Adam snaps. Ronan’s moved onto ramping up the intensity of the jets now, the light settled on a warm yellow. One of the jets is pummelling a knot at the base of Adam’s spine. He needs it, what with how tense this conversation is making him.</p><p>“Why don’t you want to? You haven’t been on a date in—”</p><p>“Jesus, fuck. Let the man live.” Ronan breaks his silence, cutting across Blue. The jets fade out, leaving them all in still water and silence.</p><p>“Please turn the jets back on, without them it’s just like we’re all in a big bath together,” Gansey says, after the stillness pushes into uncomfortable.</p><p>“Don’t act like you wouldn’t love that,” Blue jokes, and, like that, the awkward moment is over.</p><p>Henry procures another bottle of wine from somewhere, and the evening descends into the kind of ridiculous chaos Adam expects from his friends.</p><p> </p><p>Blue whispers something in Gansey’s ear and then loudly announces that they’re going to bed. Adam doesn’t miss the weird look Gansey gives her, the pointed one she gives him back, or the glance that she gives Henry that has him biting his lip mischievously and looking away. Something’s going on there, something the three of them aren’t sharing, so Adam stores the information for later.</p><p>After Blue and Gansey have rushed back in through the back door, Henry yawns exaggeratedly. Noah and Ronan have decided that the extra space vacated by Blue and Gansey means that they can see who can hold their breath underwater for the longest. The information taped to the side of the hot tub reads ‘<em>children should not be left unsupervised</em>’ and Adam considers how good that advice is.</p><p>Henry yawns again and this time Noah looks at him. “How can you be tired?”</p><p>“I need my beauty sleep,” he says and then he gives Noah a look that’s almost like the one Blue had given him.</p><p>Noah doesn’t seem to understand what it means though, because he looks blankly back at Henry, and then says, “Why are you looking at me like that?”</p><p>Henry waves Noah over to him, then whispers something in his ear. Ronan shifts around the tub again, so he’s spread right across the side opposite Adam.</p><p>Henry gets out of the tub, and he’s grabbing his towel, he looks pointedly at Noah again.</p><p>This is really fucking weird, but if Henry thinks that giving Adam alone time in the hot tub with Ronan will make them admit their feelings, Adam’s not going to call him out.</p><p>“Okay,” Noah says. “Right, yeah. I’m beat. And I’m gonna need a shower.” And he gets out after Henry.</p><p>“That was weird,” Adam observes.</p><p>“What was?”</p><p>“You didn’t notice that whole... Thing?” Adam doesn’t know he couldn’t have. He feels like he just watched an amateur theatre show.</p><p>“No. What I did notice, is that you and I are now alone.” Ronan smirks and spreads his arms out along the whole length of the tub behind him. “Come here,” he says, arrogant tilt to his head.</p><p>“Someone might see,” Adam says, but he’s moving through the water to Ronan anyway. Goosebumps prickle on his shoulders when he kneels up over Ronan’s lap.</p><p>Ronan’s hands come up and wrap around Adam’s hips. Tiny droplets of water cling to the short hairs on Ronan’s head, and they clump his dark eyelashes together. His eyes are the same blue as the moonlight reflecting off the snow around them and Adam thinks he should feel cold, but instead Ronan’s gaze makes him feel hot all over.</p><p>When Adam leans down to kiss Ronan, Ronan’s hands slide up his back to pull him in and down. Ronan’s kiss is soft and unhurried, but Adam wants more. He pushes into the kiss, swipes his tongue across Ronan’s bottom lip and licks into his mouth when Ronan opens it on a moan.</p><p>“We could—” Ronan starts to say.</p><p>“No, we couldn’t. It’s unhygienic.” Adam wants it to, but he has to be the voice of reason.</p><p>“Not if you sit on the side and come in my mouth.”</p><p>“Sit on the side? Ronan it’s fucking fifteen degrees. If I sit on the side, I’ll die.” He ignores the second part. The issues with the first part render the second part irrelevant.</p><p>“Oh no, and if you die, then you’ll never text that barista.” Ronan says, sarcastically. Adam’s regretting not taking him up on the blow job offer.</p><p>“Oh fuck you, I told you about that already.”</p><p>“You did. I didn’t know that Noah knew.” Adam has no idea why he sounds jealous.</p><p>“He was there when she gave me her number. He was also there when I very deliberately threw it in the trash, but apparently he’d forgotten that part.”</p><p>“Fuck though, if that’s the way they interrogated you about a barista... It was like the Spanish inquisition.” Ronan grips him tighter and his fingers creep innocently below the waist of Adam’s swim shorts.</p><p>“Made me kind of glad we haven’t told them yet.” Adam fingers map the sharp edges of Ronan’s cheekbones.</p><p>“Me too. I like that this is just... Ours. For now.”</p><p>“Yeah. I do too,” Adam agrees, and he kisses Ronan again.</p><p> *</p><p>“Smooth Noah,” Henry says, when Noah comes back into the room after his shower. “Bringing up the Starbucks girl like that.”</p><p>“What?” Noah screws up his nose at Henry, from underneath the towel he’s rubbing over his head. “I was just teasing him.”</p><p>“Yeah, in front of Lynch.”</p><p>“So?”</p><p>Henry raises his eyebrows at Noah, <em>get there faster.</em></p><p>“Oh!” Noah says. “Adam and Ronan! Is that why you told me to leave them alone in there? You think something will happen? After all this time?”</p><p>“Blue and I are going to make it happen. This week,” Henry whispers, furtively. “</p><p>Noah screws his nose up again. “I’m not sure that getting them alone together is going to do it. They’re alone together a lot. What does Gansey think?”</p><p>Henry waves his hand absently. “It’s not important what Richard thinks.”</p><p>“So, he doesn’t approve?” Noah asks. “I think I agree with him. They’ll get there on their own, or not at all.”</p><p>“But don’t you want them to be <em>happy? </em>They’re just making each other miserable, and I’m not going to stand by and wait until Ronan dates an Adam clone or something.”</p><p>Noah shudders and sits down heavily on his bed. “You think he’d do that?”</p><p>“He might,” Henry says, realising he’s latched onto something that will get on board with the plan. “Just picture it. Ronan gets a boyfriend, one that’s just as neurotic and highly strung as our Mr Parrish, but not as funny and endearingly charming. And then we have to spend months hearing from Adam how much he dislikes Ronan’s boyfriend.”</p><p>Noah looks a little nauseous at the thought. “Okay, I’m in,” he agrees.</p><p>*</p><p>The next morning, Adam’s in the shower, examining the bruises on his legs, when Ronan slips in through the bathroom door.</p><p>“What are you doing?” Adam asks, although the question is redundant, as it becomes immediately clear what Ronan is doing, as he efficiently strips his clothes off.</p><p>He’s in the shower with Adam, pressing him back against the wall, before Adam can protest that there isn’t enough room, or, more importantly, that this is a shared bathroom and they’re definitely going to get caught.</p><p>Those things stop being important though, what with the way that Ronan’s kissing Adam. It all still feels so new, the way that Ronan kisses like he’s got a point to prove, the way he pulls back and looks at Adam, almost in awe. It’s intense, and Adam doesn’t know why he’s surprised; Ronan does everything intensely.</p><p>So Adam kisses back just as hard, digs his fingers into Ronan’s hips just as desperately, and uses his body to tell Ronan how badly he wants him, over and over again.</p><p>The room is filling with steam, and only the cold shower wall against Adam’s back is keeping him grounded, hot water and Ronan’s hotter mouth running over his skin.</p><p>Someone is banging on the door.</p><p>“Ronan?” Gansey yells from outside. “Is that you in there?”</p><p>Ronan, stupidly, in Adam’s opinion, shuts off the shower spray and answers him.</p><p>“Yeah, why?” He shouts.</p><p>“Oh, can I come in?” Gansey asks.</p><p>“I’m in the shower,” Ronan replies, like he didn’t live with Gansey and share a combination kitchen/bathroom/laundry room with him.</p><p>“So?” Gansey’s clearly having the same thoughts as Adam. Adam leans back against the shower wall and tries not to laugh.</p><p>“It’s a glass door, Gansey,” Ronan says. Adam thinks he’s trying to sound more pissed off than he is. “Just tell me what you want.”</p><p>“I won’t look! Anyway, isn’t Adam in there with you?”</p><p>Ronan looks at Adam in wide-eyed panic. “What? No! Why would he be in here?” Ronan lies, badly, panic colouring his voice.</p><p>Adam has to bite his knuckles to stop himself from laughing.</p><p>“Oh, I thought I saw him go in there just before you.”</p><p>When Adam gets his laughter under control, he whispers, “Does Gansey think he’s missing out on a fun bathroom hang out?”</p><p>Ronan ignores him. “Why would I follow Parrish into the bathroom?”</p><p>Adam has to cover his mouth with both of his hands to stop himself from laughing. He presses his forehead against Ronan’s shoulder.</p><p>“Do you know where he is then?”</p><p>“Do I know where Parrish is? Of course I fucking don’t.”</p><p>“Liar,” Adam whispers, taking his hands from his mouth. Ronan’s turned away from him, leaning around the glass door of the shower so he can hear Gansey. It gives Adam a perfect view of his back, dark tattoo spread across it and water droplets sliding invitingly down to his round ass. Adam wants to follow the path of the drops with his tongue, kneel on the ground behind Ronan and put his mouth between the perfect mounds of his ass cheeks.</p><p>“I guess he’s in your room then?” Gansey says. “Did you want to talk about… what’s going on with you two?”</p><p>Ronan laughs, sarcastically. “Not while I’m naked.”</p><p>Like he’s proving Ronan’s nudity, and because he can’t keep his hands off, Adam runs a hand down his back and then trails his fingers down the cleft of Ronan’s ass. Ronan bites his lips and screws his eyes shut.</p><p>“Stop that,” he whispers to Adam. And then he calls to Gansey, “I’ll come find you when I’m out of the shower.”</p><p>“Okay, I’ll be reading out here.”</p><p>Ronan exhales and slumps against the wall of the shower. “What the fuck,” he mutters.</p><p>Adam turns the shower spray back on and ducks under it. He’s about to get on with what he came here to do, but Ronan grabs his hand when he reaches for his shampoo.</p><p>“What are you doing?” he asks.</p><p>“Washing my hair. Obviously.”</p><p>“If you go out there with wet hair, he’s gonna know.”</p><p>Adam looks pointedly up where his hair is already soaking, plastered to his forehead. “Bit late. Besides, I’m not just gonna walk out there right after you.”</p><p>“What are you gonna do? Climb out the window?”</p><p>Adam looks at him incredulously. The window in question is a tiny thing, set high into the wall. He’s not sure it would even open wide enough. Besides, it’s snowing heavily outside and Adam only has his thermal base layers and ski socks to put on after his shower.</p><p>“No, you’re going to distract him long enough for me to sneak out to our room.” Adam shampoos his hair, tries not to get distracted by the way Ronan keeps touching innocuous parts of his body. It’s hard though, especially when Ronan’s hands slide into his hair, and replace Adam’s, massaging in the shampoo. Adam closes his eyes and moans at the sensation.</p><p>“Distract him?” Ronan says. He’s doing such a good job of distracting Adam at the moment, that Adam can’t remember who they’re talking about at first.</p><p>“Yeah, go out there and cry about how you’re in love with me. He’ll love that, you sharing your feelings and he won’t even notice,” he says, when he remembers Gansey.</p><p>“I have never cried over you Parrish.” Ronan’s hands slide out of his hair.</p><p>“Maybe now’s a good time to start.” Adam tips his head back to rinse out the shampoo, and Ronan kisses the column of his throat.</p><p>“You know what, fuck you. I’m gonna go out there and tell him that you told me you’re in love with Henry. That’ll distract him.”</p><p>Adam weighs up for a second whether the fact that that would definitely distract Gansey outweighs the fact that he’d have to live with Gansey thinking it’s true. “Please tell him literally anything else.”</p><p>“Fine,” Ronan says, and he opens the shower door and gets out.</p><p>“Did you just come in here to make out with me?” Adam asks, getting out as well.</p><p>“Is that a problem?” Ronan asks, as he towels off.</p><p>“No, it’s not.” Adam would’ve done the same, had he thought of it, and their roles had been reversed.</p><p>“Well don’t complain then,” Ronan says, and dammit, he’s putting Adam’s clean thermal shirt on.</p><p>“Take that off,” Adam says.</p><p>“Later,” Ronan replies, and he winks at Adam as he leaves the bathroom.</p><p>Adam doesn’t want to put the sweaty t-shirt he’d slept in back on, even if it’s only for the trip back to his room. He reluctantly puts on Ronan’s almost clean tank. He hopes no one sees him though. The dark grey shirt of Adam’s that Ronan’s wearing is mostly free of suspicion, but there’s no way he’d be able to explain his sudden decision to wear black muscle tees.</p><p>Adam opens the door a crack, and he can see Ronan chatting to Gansey in the main room. Gansey has his back to him. Adam can’t hear what they’re saying, but when Ronan turns around and walks out to the porch, Gansey follows him.</p><p>Adam slips out of the bathroom and makes a run for it down to the hallway. He makes it to their room without anyone spotting him.</p><p>*</p><p>“Something strange is going on with Ronan and Adam, and I want to know what you two have done,” Gansey says, sliding onto the bench seat opposite Henry and Blue. They’ve been whispering conspiratorially, and Gansey’s only got vague ideas for what they’re conspiring about. He sets the tray of drinks down on the table between them.</p><p>“Something strange?” Blue says, and she sips her hot chocolate innocently. The sky is brilliant blue above them, and everything is rendered in technicolour by the sun reflecting off the snow.</p><p>“Yes, they’re acting irregularly.” Around them, people are sat lounging in deck chairs, wrapped up in ski gear, but soaking up the sun despite the freezing temperatures.</p><p>“It’s Adam and Ronan. I’d be more concerned if they were acting normally,” Henry says. He’s taken his helmet off, and his running his hands through his hair, trying fruitlessly to get it to perk up again.</p><p>“<em>We </em>haven’t done anything yet,” says Blue, and Gansey believes her. “What’s happened then? What’s <em>irregular?</em>”</p><p>“Well this morning, Ronan was in the bathroom and I—”</p><p>“God Gansey, you didn’t ask if you could go in there did you?”</p><p>“Well yes, and—”</p><p>“And he didn’t let you and that’s what’s strange?” Blue cuts him off again. “You’re not seventeen year olds with no boundaries anymore!”</p><p>He concedes that she may have a point.</p><p>“I think Gansey-man may have a point,” Henry says, unexpectedly. “Since when did Lynch have boundaries?”</p><p>“That’s not the only thing! I asked him how things were with Adam, and he sort of smiled weirdly and said things were fine!” He’d also seemed very keen on taking Gansey outside to look at the bindings on Blue’s skis, uncharacteristically concerned that they hadn’t been set properly.</p><p>“And?” Blue raises an eyebrow, quizzically.</p><p>“And normally, if I ask him that, he groans and says he doesn’t want to talk about it.” It’s the response Gansey had been expecting as he’d knelt in the storage cupboard with Ronan, and said, <em>‘so, did you want to talk about Adam?’</em> Ronan’s answer had been more unexpected than his fretfulness over Blue’s skis.</p><p>“Maybe Adam was in the shower with him,” Henry suggests.</p><p>“Ha! That’s ridiculous, as if those two could keep it quiet if they got together!” Blue says. “We just need to step it up.”</p><p>Gansey’s anxious about what that might entail, but Blue doesn’t get a chance to elaborate on their plans, because Ronan, Adam, and Noah are approaching the table.</p><p>“Everything okay?”</p><p>“Parrish went off the side of the piste and hit a tree,” Ronan laughs.</p><p>“That is not what happened,” Adam says, looking annoyed.</p><p>“Yes it is. You weren’t looking where you were going, you went off the side, into the powder and straight into a tree.”</p><p>Gansey expects Adam to keep arguing, or to at least look annoyed, especially when Ronan and Noah recreate the incident, with Ronan playing Adam, and Noah playing the part of the tree. He’s not though, he just watching Ronan flail about and hiding a tiny smile in the palm of his hand.</p><p>It's not the first time that Gansey’s noticed this, their new reluctance towards antagonism. He thinks maybe it’s growth, and it’s also the exact reason why he doesn’t want Blue and Henry to rush them. If these are the steps they need to take to get to the point where they can make a relationship work, then Gansey wants them to take them in their own time, no matter how long it takes.</p><p>*</p><p>Blue and Gansey are sitting on the corner couch in the main room. Gansey’s reading and Blue’s crocheting something that looks to Adam like a very misshapen hat for something with a lot of ears. Somehow, they’re sitting in such a way that they both manage to be on top of each other; a Gordian knot of limbs.</p><p>“Are you guys coming out for dinner?” He asks them. “To that pizza place down the road?”</p><p>“Oh.” Blue doesn’t look up from her indigo monstrosity. “Gansey and I were thinking of having a night in, just us. You know…”</p><p>“We were?” Gansey asks, and Blue kicks him. Adam doesn’t often make a note of suspicious behaviour amongst his friends, but it’s becoming a habit on this trip. He’s got a mental list.</p><p>“Yeah. Try out the hot tub?” Blue says, winking, and Adam very suddenly wishes he weren’t in the room, especially not when he clocks the dopey grin that spreads across Gansey’s face.</p><p>He’s saved though, by the arrival of Noah and Henry, in through the front door. Henry is leaning on Noah and limping rather exaggeratedly. Adam’s suspicious behaviour list grows.</p><p>“What happened?” Gansey asks, concern colouring his voice.</p><p>“I slipped on some ice outside. I think I might have sprained my ankle,” Henry says.</p><p>“I’m going to take him down to that little first aid room at the ski centre,” Noah says.</p><p>“Oh, looks like you guys won’t be able to go to the pizza place tonight either!” Blue says, and yes, Adam is <em>definitely </em>suspicious.</p><p>“It’s fine, we can just all go tomorrow instead,” he says, testing the waters. Maybe he’s not the only one who’s suspicious here. If the others are trying to give him and Ronan some privacy, Adam’s not going to turn his nose up at it.</p><p>“Oh no, you and Ronan should go together!” Blue insists.</p><p>Adam raises an eyebrow at her. <em>I see you Blue Sargent. </em>She raises both of hers right back, challenging. Adam’s not sure if this means that they know and they want to give them space, or if it means that he and Ronan are being unnecessarily set up.</p><p>“Fine, we will. Enjoy your night in. Hope your ankle is better by tomorrow, Henry.” Adam’s willing to put money on the fact that it will be.</p><p> </p><p>In the restaurant, Adam takes a sip of his beer, and says, “How do you think they’ll react when they find out they unwittingly sent us on our first date?”</p><p>“This is a date? Fuck, I’d have…” Ronan trails off.</p><p>“You’d have what? Brought me flowers? Worn something other than a leather jacket and a sweater with ketchup on it?”</p><p>“Yeah, that one. And it’s barbecue sauce, actually.”</p><p>“Remind me why I’m dating you?”</p><p>“Because, like a fool, you love me.”</p><p>Adam grins. “Yeah, I do.”</p><p>“I love you too,” Ronan says, and there it is. It’s out there and no one freaked out. Not Adam, like he thought he would, and not Ronan, who’s been so clearly bursting with the need to say it for days. Maybe it’s too early for convention, but nothing about his relationship with Ronan has ever been conventional.</p><p>They share a large pizza, and every slice is heavy with meat and it’s delicious and cheesy and Adam’s ravenous from another long day of skiing. The pizza is devoured far quicker than Adam thought possible, and he knows that it’s not just Ronan’s disgustingly fast eating to blame.</p><p>“I think that Blue knows something. Or she’s at least suspicious,” Adam says. He’s stuffed, but he’s still contemplating the dessert menu.</p><p>“What makes you think that?” Ronan asks.</p><p>Adam raises an eyebrow and looks pointedly around the restaurant. “Awfully convenient that Henry hurt himself and Noah had to take him to the first aid room. Strange, that Blue was the one who suggested we eat out tonight, and then decided to have a night in with Gansey.”</p><p>“You’re being paranoid. If we just told them, you wouldn’t have to be. But then if we told them, we’d have Blue and Gansey sat on the table next to us, trying to act like they aren’t watching, and Cheng taking pictures through the window.”</p><p>Adam snorts. “I don’t think you’re being paranoid enough.”</p><p>“If they wanna set us up on a date, then just let them,” Ronan says. “I can’t believe you’re complaining that we actually got to go out for a meal like normal people.”</p><p>“I don’t think you should be allowed to call yourself a normal person when you eat pizza slices in three bites like that,” Adam says. Ronan kicks him under the table.</p><p>As first dates go, it’s pretty near to perfect.</p><p>*</p><p>It’s warm in the bed, under the piles of blankets, and it’s cosy, sun streaming in the window through the gap in the curtains. Adam’s lying between Ronan’s legs, their bare cocks sliding together at the hottest point between them. One of Ronan’s hands has crept between Adam’s ass cheeks, and his fingers are rubbing maddeningly at his hole. Adam’s given up on kisses, he’s just panting wetly against Ronan’s ear, while Ronan kisses his neck.</p><p>“You wanna…?” Ronan asks, voice like gravel.</p><p>Adam groans in reply. “Yeah,” he breathes, and he turns his head to catch Ronan’s mouth with his own again. It’s getting hotter under the blankets, and Adam kicks them off, exposing his heated skin to the cool of the room.</p><p>Ronan’s hand leaves his ass, but it’s back before Adam has a chance to miss the contact, and this time his fingers are slick. Adam grits his teeth as one slides inside, and he pushes back into the stretch.</p><p>“Fuck yeah,” he says on an exhale.</p><p>“Ronan! It’s been snowing all night, we should totally go—<em>Oh my God my eyes</em>!” Noah comes bursting into the room.</p><p>The moment seems frozen for a second; all of them stuck in wide-eyed panic. Adam’s never considered before that there are levels of nakedness but being caught like this has abruptly redefined the word. He’ll never again feel exposed, no matter the situation.</p><p>“Shit,” Adam says, and he throws the blankets back over himself.</p><p>“Shut the fucking door!” Ronan shouts, which is really not the issue.</p><p>Noah slams the door and leans against it. He still hasn’t said anything, and Adam frantically worries that their friendship won’t ever get past this.</p><p>“With you on the other side!” Ronan says. Adam peers out from under the covers to confirm that no, Noah has not left the room.</p><p>“Oh, course, yeah,” Noah says, looking flustered. “Oh God. Why that? Why? Why couldn’t you have just been kissing?” He sounds distraught. Adam is very much on the same level.</p><p>Noah turns back to the door, and he’s just opening it again to leave when Adam has a realisation.</p><p>“No, wait, don’t go. Let me put my shorts back on.”</p><p>“What?” Noah and Ronan say together, matching surprised tones.</p><p>“He can’t just go back out there, he’ll tell them!” Adam hisses, as he tries to put his pyjama shorts back on without giving Noah anymore of a view than he already has. Adam’s lost too much dignity this morning.</p><p>“Fuck. Don’t go anywhere,” Ronan says, and he’s got his underpants back on too, Adam’s relieved to see.</p><p>“Why can’t they know? Did this only just happen? Is this because you went out last night?”</p><p>Ronan snorts. “Yeah, Parrish took me on a date and I just <em>had</em> to put out.”</p><p>“Shut up,” Adam hisses at him. “Not only just, no. It was a couple of weeks before we came. We figured some stuff out and—” Adam stops, because Noah is suddenly laughing.</p><p>“What’s funny?” Ronan asks.</p><p>“Blue and Henry are trying to set you guys up!” Noah says, through his giggles. “They have this plan, they’re calling it operation Last Christmas. They told me not to tell you guys, but, fuck, this is too funny. You’re already together! And they think they’re setting you up!”</p><p>“I knew it,” Adam says, feeling vindicated.</p><p>“That does explain so fucking much,” Ronan says. He looks at Adam and Adam looks back. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Parrish?”</p><p>There’s a devious smirk on Ronan’s lips. Oh yeah, Adam’s definitely thinking what Ronan’s thinking. He nods.</p><p>“Wait, what are you thinking?” Noah asks, laughter dropping off his face.</p><p>“They want to set us up? Well, we don’t have to make it easy,” Ronan says. “What time is it?”</p><p>“7:30,” Adam supplies.</p><p>“Are the others up yet?” he asks Noah.</p><p>“No. Henry rolled over and went back to sleep when I tried to wake him for first lift, and I haven’t heard anything from Blue and Gansey yet.”</p><p>“Fucking fantastic. Chuck me that pillow,” Ronan says to Adam. He pulls on a t-shirt as well and grabs a couple of the blankets off of the bed. As Adam watches him leave the room, he laments the fact that they’re clearly not going to be having sex this morning. But then, maybe this is going to be just as fun. Albeit in a different way.</p><p>*</p><p>Blue finally decides that she may as well get up and attempt another day of skiing. She’s starting to see the appeal, and Ronan says she’s improving. Gansey had said they’d go somewhere new today, and Blue’s looking forward to seeing new forests and mountainous skylines.</p><p>The sky is calm and clear outside, and Blue shuffles out of her room, three pairs of socks allowing her to slide noiselessly over the hardwood floors. There’s a very large lump asleep on the couch, and when Blue gets closer, on her way to get coffee, she realises that it’s a Ronan-shaped lump.</p><p>The lump groans and almost rolls off the couch.</p><p>“Morning?” Blue says. “What’re you doing out here?”</p><p>“Sleeping,” Ronan says, and he rolls the other way, burying his face in the back of the couch.</p><p><em>Duh, </em>Blue doesn’t say. “I can see that. Why are you out here?”</p><p>“Ask Parrish,” Ronan snaps and oh fuck, clearly operation Last Christmas is not going to plan. She really thought their “date” had gone well last night; she hadn’t even heard them come back.</p><p>Whatever has happened though, Blue doesn’t actually want to deal with it before she’s had her coffee.</p><p>The lump on the couch doesn’t move again, and Blue’s just pouring her coffee out, when Adam comes down the hallway. He’s already dressed, ski pants on and everything, and Blue watches as he gives the couch a <em>look,</em> one that she can’t read.</p><p>“Do I want to know?” She asks, nodding towards where Ronan has finally got up and stalked off in the direction Adam’s just come from.</p><p>Adam shrugs as he pours himself a coffee too. “Lynch,” he says, like that’s an explanation. Maybe it is.</p><p>Blue hums. “Sorry for making you share a room with him. And for making you go out with just him last night. I didn’t know if you were still… hung up on him.” It’s been at least two months since Blue had last had a conversation about the subject with Adam. Not that the conversations were ever regular, but she thinks one is due.</p><p>Adam raises an eyebrow. “I cannot believe you just said that. And don’t worry. I’m not.” The sound of him pushing the lever down on the toaster punctuates the sentence.</p><p>Blue startles at that so hard that she spills her coffee on the countertop. Adam passes her a cloth to clean it up with. “What do you mean? You had a fight?”</p><p>“Yeah. And it’s not just that. I got sick of waiting for him to decide the time was right. It wasn’t right in high school because we both had so much other shit going on. It wasn’t right when I was at college because I was never around enough. If it’s not right now, then maybe those were just his excuses.” Adam’s toast pops up right on cue. He silently spreads butter on it, while Blue digests what he’s said.</p><p>“But… but… When did you decide this? Before we came here? You didn’t say anything. And you’ve been getting on so well with him!” Blue worries a little, that Adam’s going to see right through her pushing.</p><p>“When he’s not being a raging asshole, I can be friends with him. We’re trying that.” Adam starts eating his toast. Four bites per slice and it’s all gone in eight. “With varying degrees of success.”</p><p>Blue’s head is spinning. Despite the fact that it makes her feel like a woman in a cliched TV drama, she grabs hold of the counter to steady herself.</p><p>“It’s not your problem, Blue,” Adam says, kindly, and he slides around her, out of the kitchen and back down towards his room.</p><p>Blue makes herself another coffee. A stronger one this time. She’s still reeling over what Adam said, when Henry comes out. His hair is looking deflated, and Blue relates.</p><p>“I think,” she says. “That we may need to step up operation Last Christmas.”</p><p>“Oh? Why?” Henry plays about with the coffee maker until steam shoots out of it. Blue has no idea how he gets it to do that.</p><p>“Ronan slept on the couch last night, and Adam just told me they argued. He said he’s sick of waiting for the right time. He thinks Ronan’s just making excuses.” She should’ve asked more questions, should’ve stopped Adam from walking off. She takes that fact that he still went back to the room he shares with Ronan as a sign that their relationship isn’t completely destroyed.</p><p>“But their date! Did he say how it went?”</p><p>“No, and I’m assuming if they had a fight, then it didn’t go well.” Damn, she really should’ve asked.</p><p>“You’re right. We just have to try harder. How hard do you think it will be to lock them in a cupboard together?” Henry asks, and he looks like he seriously thinks that’s a good idea.</p><p>Blue rolls her eyes. “That’s a little too obvious don’t you think? Besides, we don’t need to set up them having alone time. They share a room. I was just thinking we get them both very drunk.”</p><p>“Ahh yes. That’s why you’re the brains of this operation. Alcohol: locking them in the cupboard of inebriation!” Henry declares.</p><p>*</p><p>“I <em>think</em> that I might have overdone it,” Adam says, after he’s shut the bedroom door behind himself. He leans back against it, and Ronan’s eyes catch on where Adam’s thermal top is clinging to the muscles in his stomach and stretching slightly across his pecs. <em>Fuck, </em>this week is gonna give Ronan a thing for guys in ski gear. Adam in ski gear. Specifically. They are definitely repeating this trip.</p><p>“Fuck, am I gonna have to <em>actually </em>sleep on the couch? What did you say to her?” He walks across the room, puts his hands on Adam’s sides and slides his fingers up under his shirt. His skin is soft and warm against Ronan’s cold fingers.</p><p>“I told her about the argument we had. You know the one…”</p><p>“The one that ended in fucking?” Ronan smirks at the memory. They hadn’t even made it to Adam’s bedroom. Knocking books to the floor, kiss bitten lips, pants around knees and hands up shirts, raw desperation, like a pot had boiled over and over and flooded the apartment.</p><p>“Yeah, that one. Except I didn’t tell her how it ended, obviously. You need to get dressed.” He looks meaningfully down at where Ronan is wearing nothing but briefs.</p><p>“What? I was thinking we could… pick up where we left off?” He presses Adam back against the door and brushes his lips across Adam’s jaw.</p><p>“Not if you don’t want them to get suspicious. We’re supposed to be fighting.” Adam gently pushes Ronan back with a hand on his chest and grabs his coat off the bed. “Anyway, we’re driving further out to that other place today, I want to ski something harder.”</p><p>“Oh I’ll give you something harder,” Ronan says.</p><p>“Fuck off,” Adam replies, but he kisses Ronan again anyway.</p><p>*</p><p>“I don’t think you’re ready to go down the red yet,” Ronan says, loudly, slamming the car door.</p><p>Adam glares at him. “Maybe if you actually bothered to teach me anything.”</p><p>“It’s not that hard, Parrish. Maybe you should accept that you can’t be good at everything.”</p><p>“Oh, fuck you, Lynch.”</p><p>Everyone else is looking at each other awkwardly, and Ronan thinks he should feel guilty, about putting them in the middle of this fight. And then he remembers he’s Ronan Lynch, and this is a fake fight anyway. Then he just finds it funny all over again.</p><p>“Uhh, maybe we should just get going,” Gansey says, and, okay, yeah, Ronan feels a little guilty about letting Gansey think he’s fighting with Adam. But Gansey definitely had the power to put a stop to the fucking <em>Next Christmas </em>thing, or whatever the fuck Noah said Cheng and Sargent have called their plan.</p><p>They bicker the whole time they’re queuing for the chairlift, and when Adam gets on the same one as him, Ronan hopes the others think it’s just so they can continue their argument. It’s definitely something they’ve done before.</p><p>“Maybe this is working too well,” Adam says, but he grins as he says it.</p><p>“You think? I’m worried Noah’s gonna wreck it by laughing.” Noah’s been very obviously biting on his lip, or the inside of his mouth while Ronan and Adam fight, and he thinks it’s only a matter of time before he cracks.</p><p>“We can “make up” by the bottom of this run.” Adam says. “When I do it without falling over, you can beg for my forgiveness.”</p><p>Ronan snorts. “Are you changing what you want now?”</p><p>“Fuck no. That was for a green run anyway, this is harder. You can’t keep moving the goalposts.”</p><p>“They’re my goalposts, I can move them where I like.”</p><p>“Asshole.” Adam knocks his shoulder into Ronan’s. “I know you don’t wanna lie to Gansey. But just tell him you’re bored of teaching me.”</p><p>“That’s not a lie,” Ronan says. It almost is, he wants go fast, go snowboard down black runs as fast as he can, go to the freestyle park with Noah. But also, he wants to be with Adam, could never be bored of him.</p><p>“Exactly,” Adam says. “Just pretend it’s a month ago and you can’t stand being around me because you want to make out with me.”</p><p>“I can’t stand being around you. You’re smug when you’re getting laid and I want to make out with you all the time.”</p><p>“That’s the attitude,” Adam says, and yeah, his smug grin is so hot that Ronan wants to throw himself into a snowbank.</p><p> </p><p>At the top of the mountain, the run splits into two and curls around the lift station. The easier green run takes a more winding route out along the ridge of the mountain, and hairpins around to come back to meet the red route again under the chair lift. The red drops almost straight down, a much steeper and much quicker path. Ronan stands at the top of the red. It’s really not that steep, there’s no way that Adam couldn’t do it.</p><p>“There’s no way you can do that,” he says to Adam, loudly, within earshot of Blue and Gansey.</p><p>“Thought I wasn’t ready to go down a red,” Adam snipes.</p><p>Gansey and Blue exchange an awkward look, and Gansey says, “Blue and I are just going to take the green down,” before Adam can argue back in front of them. Henry and Noah have already gone, up another chairlift that takes them to the top of a black run.</p><p>Blue and Gansey move off quicker than Ronan had anticipated they would, and Adam’s looking at him with a wry twist to his mouth.</p><p>“You can definitely ski that, that’s piss easy. The red gets steeper and a bit icy further down the mountain but this part is good and you’ll get enough speed up to actually parallel ski.” Now they’re alone, he’s going to be a supportive boyfriend again.</p><p>“And how do I do that?”</p><p>“Keep your knees close together, twist from your hips, keep your ass tucked in, shift your weight from foot to foot. I’d stick out the pole that’s in the hand of the direction you want to turn in and pivot around that, as a guide.”</p><p>Adam frowns down at the slope. Well, he’s got his googles down, and his coat zipped all the way up, so Ronan can’t see that he’s frowning, but he knows he’s frowning. Especially when Adam says, “And what is the advantage of skiing like that?”</p><p>“You go faster, you look cooler, and you don’t end the week feeling like your knees are going to pop out. Just try it, you can start out snowploughing, but I want you to at least try,” Ronan says, and he knows he’s got Adam with that line.</p><p>“Okay,” Adam says, but he still sounds sceptical.</p><p>“If you can parallel ski by the end of the day, you can fuck me tonight.”</p><p>Adam laughs, delighted. “Alright then. I’ll bear that in mind.”</p><p>Ronan watches him go. He starts out snowploughing, makes one wobbly attempt to do a parallel turn, then snowploughs the rest of the way down.</p><p>Ronan skis the whole short section in one long turn.</p><p>“You didn’t do it!” he says to Adam. He’s half laughing.</p><p>“I tried!” Adam doesn’t sound like he finds the situation funny at all.</p><p>Blue and Gansey join them on the intersection between the two runs. They stand there awkwardly and watch Ronan and Adam argue.</p><p>“No you didn’t! You chickened out.” Ronan doesn’t know if this is still part of their fake fight.</p><p>“Your instructions weren’t clear. And that slope was a lot fucking steeper than you said it would be,” Adam snaps, and oh fuck, he actually does sound mad at Ronan. So much for the fake fight.</p><p>“You guys should just go,” Ronan says to Gansey.</p><p>“Are you sure? Maybe I can give Adam some tips on parallel skiing, and you can go with Blue?”</p><p>Ronan has no idea what to do. Adam’s not even looking at him. He’s staring up at the slope they just came down, watching other people effortlessly fly down it. Ronan wishes he knew what Adam was thinking.</p><p>“Adam?” Ronan says, and bizarrely, it’s the unexpected use of his first name that has Adam looking at him again.</p><p>“Go with Blue,” he says, and Ronan doesn’t know what the tone of his voice means.</p><p>Half of Ronan wants to dig his heels in and refuse to go. The other half just tells him to do what Adam wants him to do, to go with Sargent and leave Adam to ski with Gansey.</p><p>“Okay,” he finally says. “Come on maggot. We can just stay on the green.”</p><p>Blue nods. She’s frowning, biting her lip, but she follows after Ronan when he skis into the trees. He watches her ski down the first part, and tries not to listen to Adam and Gansey talking behind him. From what he can hear, they are actually talking about skiing. They ski off down the red run, and Ronan focuses on Sargent’s skiing, rather than on how he’s going to fix things with Adam.</p><p>She’s actually skiing quite well, mostly straightening up her skis between turns and building up speed when the piste is flatter, looking confident. When she disappears around the hairpin corner, behind the trees, Ronan moves to follow her. Instead of skiing down the slope, he cuts directly down through the deep snow, weaving between the trees.</p><p>He emerges from the trees just uphill from where Blue has, unfortunately, fallen on her ass. She’s trying to get back up but as soon as he’s close enough to her, Ronan turns hard to stop, spraying her with snow. Sargent falls over again.</p><p>“I hate you,” Blue says, from the ground. She’s trying again to stand up, but struggling not to slide backwards down the hill. Ronan holds his hand out to her, and she reluctantly lets herself be hauled to her feet.</p><p>“So what did you fight with him about?” Blue asks. Ronan’s annoyed that they apparently have to have this conversation</p><p>“I don’t think it’s any of your business, Blue,” Ronan says.</p><p>“It is when we’ve all got to share a cabin with you!”</p><p>“Sargent. Fuck off and mind your own business. Do you want me to teach you to ski like an adult, instead of like a child, or not?”</p><p>Blue purses her lips. “You may as well tell me your side of it, because Adam already told me his, this morning.”</p><p>“Bastard,” Ronan says. “Did he also tell you why he was being a little shit just now as well?”</p><p>“Same reason, I thought.”</p><p><em>Unhelpful,</em> Ronan thinks. He sighs. He tries to explain to Blue the same thing he’d just explained to Adam before. He tries to give a bit more detail on where she should put her weight. The slope they’re on isn’t as steep as the one he’d got Adam to ski, so he’s pretty sure Blue can manage this.</p><p>She does fall a couple of times, mostly spinning out because she’s going too fast, or her skis are too far apart. A couple of times, she manages to stop herself from falling completely with some pretty impressive saves. It makes Ronan feel strangely proud.</p><p>There’s a little freestyle park off the edge of the run, and Ronan does a couple of jumps and rail slides, and misses that Adam isn’t there to see him do it.</p><p>The green run intersects with the red again, and Gansey and Adam are waiting, with Henry and Noah, at the intersection.</p><p>Ronan skis slowly down to them with Blue. He doesn’t look at Adam when he joins the group, and he knows that Adam is avoiding looking at him.  </p><p>“You’re looking good, Blue!” Noah says, grinning. “There’s another one of the little freestyle parks further down the green, do you want me to show you how to do some tricks?”</p><p>Gansey starts to protest this. “I don’t think that’s a good—”</p><p>“Ganseyman, do you want to come and do that black run with me? You do? Oh great, let’s go,” Henry says, and he all but pushes Gansey off in the direction of the chairlift.</p><p>Blue and Noah head off down the green too, and leave Ronan alone with Adam. Ronan turns to him and opens his mouth to make a joke, but Adam has already skied away, down the red run that leads to the bottom of the mountain.</p><p>Ronan doesn’t know what choice he has but to ski after him.</p><p>He stays behind Adam the whole way, watching him. His turns are more parallel than not, and while he isn’t skiing very fast, he’s certainly doing it with determination. Ronan remembers the other day, telling Blue to ski like she had a point to prove. It’s pretty clear to him that this is what Adam’s doing.</p><p>He gets to the bottom without falling over as well, and fuck, if fighting with Adam was what it was going to take to get him to do it, then Ronan would’ve done it sooner. He doubts Adam’s in the mood to rim him anymore, though.</p><p>Ronan hangs back a bit more, and watches Adam take his skis off and stand them against a rack. He then turns around and looks expectantly up at where Ronan is watching him. Ronan takes it as a sign that he’s allowed to approach.</p><p>“You look cold, Parrish,” he says, as he unclips his skis. Adam’s standing with his arms wrapped around himself, and Ronan can see his leg is twitching a little.</p><p>Adam narrows his eyes at him. “Maybe because I am.”</p><p>“Are you really mad at me?” Fuck, Ronan sounds pathetic.</p><p>“Yes.” Adam doesn’t look at him, but he carries on talking. “It’s like you wanted me to hurt myself.”</p><p>Ronan stomach drops. “No. Never, ever. I didn’t, I wouldn’t ask you to do something I didn’t think you could do. I love you.”</p><p>Ronan thinks he’s about to get berated for using that to try and win an argument, but Adam says, “I know. I was just scared. You go a lot faster when you ski like that. I didn’t want to hit my head again.” Ronan can tell how hard this is for him to admit.</p><p>Ronan walks closer to him, close enough that he can feel the warm puffs of Adam’s breath on his face. “I made a mistake,” he says, admitting something hard as well. “I thought you’d be fine with it. I hope you can—”</p><p>“Yeah I do,” Adam says, and Ronan’s relieved that Adam didn’t make him say it. “I’m still freezing.”</p><p>Ronan takes the zipper of Adam’s coat into his hand and drags it all the way up, until the coat is done up all the way over Adam’s chin.</p><p>“This is what you get for buying a coat on eBay,” Ronan tells him. “Someday Parrish, you’re going to realise that that job you spend all your time at actually pays you.”</p><p>“I don’t spend all my time there. I’m not there now. I’m here. Freezing. I am not going to buy a brand new coat that I’m only going to wear for a week.”</p><p>“Only a week? You’re never skiing again?” Ronan takes Adam’s helmet off his head, takes his beanie out of his pocket, tucks the beanie on Adam’s head, then replaces his helmet over it.</p><p>“Thanks,” Adam says, so softly that Ronan almost doesn’t hear it.</p><p>“You’re gonna want that off when we get going again. As soon as Sargent and Noah stop pissing about in the freestyle park, I’ll take you down another red run and then you’ll really warm up.”</p><p>“Freestyle park? That sounds fun.”</p><p>“We can go to the big one tomorrow. I’ll do snowboard tricks, and they’ll make you really horny.”</p><p>“Fuck off,” Adam says. Ronan notices his cheeks are burning deeper pink, as he moves behind him and drapes his arms over Adam’s shoulder like a big heavy blanket. “If they see us standing like this, they’ll think we’ve stopped fighting.”</p><p>“We have,” Ronan says. “The fake fight is over too.”</p><p>“Hmm, okay.” Adam awkwardly turns his head and presses a kiss to Ronan’s cheek.</p><p>Ronan has to bite the inside of his mouth to stop himself from doing something embarrassing. He looks up at the slope instead where Noah and Blue have just appeared around the corner.</p><p>Adam moves to shrug him off, but Ronan tightens his grip. “This isn’t suspicious,” he says.</p><p>“Oh so we’d have done this six months ago?”</p><p>“Yeah, and you’d have pretended to hate it, and I’d’ve been as obnoxiously annoying about it as possible.”</p><p>“Good to know you have self-awareness.”</p><p>As Blue and Noah get closer, Adam stiffens his stance, and Ronan moves so his elbows are digging into Adam’s shoulders. Less <em>I’ll keep you warm </em>and more <em>you’re convenient to lean on and I like annoying you.</em></p><p>“Adam you seem to have fallen in some douchebag. It’s all over your back,” Blue says.</p><p>“I’ll wipe it off in a bit. I just hope it doesn’t leave a stain, I want to wear this coat again,” Adam says, dryly. Ronan tightens his arms a little, an imperceptible hug, and then he lets go.</p><p>“Come on, Noah, while Gansey’s not here to mother-hen, let’s take these guys down the red run off the other side of the mountain.”</p><p>*</p><p>It’s early evening, and the others are out, at the store, or a bar, or wherever the fuck they are that isn’t the cabin. Ronan doesn’t care. He doesn’t care because their absence means he can back Adam up against the kitchen cabinets and kiss him.</p><p>Adam’s hands run around the top of Ronan’s jeans, his fingers skimming just beneath the waistband, just up under his shirt. Ronan’s hands move restlessly across Adam’s body, fingers through his hair, down the sides of his neck, across his chest.</p><p>“You skied that whole run without falling over,” Ronan whispers against Adam’s mouth.</p><p>“I did,” Adam replies. “Does that mean I get to—”</p><p>“Yeah, yeah, anything you want.”</p><p>There’s the sound of voices in the porch, sounding much closer than Ronan thought, back sooner than he’d expected. He knows he doesn’t have time to move away without looking guilty, so he sticks his finger in Adam’s eye.</p><p>“I got it!” He says loudly, as Blue and Gansey enter the cabin.</p><p>“Got what?” Gansey says.</p><p>“I had something in my eye,” Adam says, without missing a beat and fuck, Ronan loves him.</p><p>“What was it?” Blue asks, narrowing her eyes.</p><p>“Eyelash,” Ronan says, at the exact same time as Adam. The look Adam shoots him says <em>Ronan’s finger </em>though, and man, he’s going to pay for that later.</p><p>“Great. We got movie snacks. You two don’t have <em>plans</em> for tonight do you?” Blue says. Ronan wonders why she puts so much emphasis on plans. She probably thinks that they made up from their fight in a way that matches with her <em>plans.</em></p><p>“No,” Adam says. “I’m exhausted though, so I’ll probably fall asleep.” He yawns then, to prove his point. It could be the beginnings of a lie that will let them get to bed early, but then Adam does look tired. Ronan mentally prepares himself to be used as pillow later on and have to pretend like he’s not really enjoying it.</p><p>*</p><p>When they put the movie on, Blue leans against Gansey’s chest and puts her feet in Henry’s lap. She’s got the bowl of popcorn in her lap, her boys around her, and it’s her choice of movie playing. This vacation is great.</p><p>Half an hour into the movie, Henry nudges her leg to get her attention. He nods at the other couch, where Adam’s fallen asleep, his head on Ronan’s chest. Ronan’s staring intently at the tv screen, but his fingers are playing with the hair at the nape of Adam’s neck. It’s the first time that Blue’s seen any of the behaviour Gansey thinks of as being irregular.</p><p>He must notice Blue and Henry looking, because he flashes them the middle finger of his free hand.</p><p>Henry turns back to Blue, and he mouths <em>progress. Finally, </em>Blue mouths back.</p><p>When the movie finishes, Adam doesn’t wake up. He’s curled more into Ronan, one arm thrown low across his stomach. It’s the kind of easy familiarity that Blue knows they’ve shared for a long time, but there’s a longing there too that makes something in Blue ache to look at.</p><p>“You gonna wake him up and go to bed, Lynch?” Gansey asks.</p><p>Ronan doesn’t look up, but he says, “In a minute.”</p><p>His arm curls around Adam, and Blue thinks how much progress can they really make, when in the end, it’s up to Ronan and Adam to talk about their relationship? Blue doesn’t understand why they haven’t yet. She just doesn’t get it, how they can have that familiarity, and that trust, and yet not take that leap.</p><p>*</p><p>“Parrish,” Ronan whispers. “Wake up.”</p><p>“The movie over already?” Adam says around a yawn.</p><p>“Yeah, dumbass, you fell asleep.” The room is dark, save for the dull light coming from the TV screen saver. Pixelated fireworks explode on it.</p><p>“That’s okay,” Adam says sleepily, and he pushes his face deeper into Ronan’s chest.</p><p>Ronan kisses the top of his head. “Time to go to bed, Parrish.”</p><p>“Shh, can’t say that in front of Blue,” Adam mumbles, nonsensically.</p><p>“She’s not here, she’s gone to bed already.”</p><p>“I didn’t mean to fall asleep on you. They’re gonna think their plan’s working.”</p><p>“Don’t worry, I’ll tell them you drooled all over me and it was disgusting.” Ronan nudges at Adam, getting him to sit up properly.</p><p>“Hmm, was gonna eat you out,” Adam says, rolling to standing.</p><p>Ronan laughs. “Yeah, you can do that another time, Parrish.”</p><p>“Good,” Adam says, and he slumps on Ronan, forcing him to half carry him down to their room.</p><p>*</p><p>“I reckon I get enough speed up to at least do a 720 off that jump.”</p><p>They’re at the freestyle park, and Ronan and Noah are stood at the top of the biggest course of jumps, planning how they’re going to tackle it. Adam and the others are waiting at the bottom, and Ronan’s trying to play it cool, like he’s not intentionally trying to impress Adam.</p><p>Noah shakes his head. “You’re fucking stupid.”</p><p>“That.” Ronan pulls his goggles over his eyes. “Is not a very nice thing to say about Adam.”</p><p>He pushes off the top and when Ronan hits the top of the jump, he’s got enough speed that he manages the trick, but he doesn’t land it quite right. He doesn’t land on his head, he lands on his ass, but it’s still embarrassing. Even more so when he sees Adam watching him.</p><p>Noah had followed him down the run, and he stops next to where Ronan is gathering together his pride. “Are we allowed to make jokes about you and Adam then? Because I have a lot saved up.”</p><p>Ronan undoes his snowboard bindings and rolls to his feet. “No, only I’m allowed.”</p><p>“Alright, then I’ll just stick to making jokes about whatever the fuck that was.”</p><p>“Dickhead,” Ronan says. “What did you do?”</p><p>“Same thing as you except I landed it because I’m not focussed on <em>impressing someone.”</em></p><p>Adam is within earshot then, and he laughs at what Noah says.</p><p>“Do you know, watching you come down that freestyle run was really hot, until you ruined it by landing on your ass,” he says to Ronan</p><p>“Fuck. Alright, I’ll go do it again and I won’t land on my ass. You’re gonna be so fucking turned on.”</p><p>“I’m sure I will,” Adam says, dryly, with a little smirk on his face.</p><p> </p><p>There’s an apres-ski bar at the bottom of the freestyle park, and Ronan sits carefully down on one of the aesthetically hard seats. His ass was already sore, from where Adam fucked him quickly this morning, and now, after his fall, it feels even worse. He balls his coat up and sits on that instead.</p><p>“You’re gonna have one hell of a bruise, Lynch,” Henry comments.</p><p>Ronan snorts. “It won’t be as bad as the one on Parrish’s ass from where he fell on the ice on Tuesday.”</p><p>He doesn’t even realise what he’s said, until Blue says, “And why were you looking at Adam’s naked ass?”</p><p>“He walked in while I was changing,” Adam says, quickly, while Ronan’s still floundering for an excuse.</p><p>Noah and Gansey come back with a tray of beers then, but Blue’s still giving Ronan a weird look. She narrows her eyes at him, and he glowers right back.</p><p>“Problem, Sargent?”</p><p>Her answering smile is saccharine. “Not at all,” she says, and sips her beer. “Gansey, what the hell is this?”</p><p>“Beer! It’s by a local craft brewery!” He sounds excited. Ronan withholds his judgement until he’s tried it. He lets the others argue about beer choices and takes his phone out of his pocket to text Adam.</p><p>
  <em>R: Nice save</em>
</p><p>
  <em>A: No problem. I’ll kiss it better later?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>R: What a line</em>
</p><p>
  <em>A: Is it not gonna work?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>R: Course it is shithead</em>
</p><p>
  <em>A: Good. Didn’t get to last night and I’ve been thinking about it.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>R: ???</em>
</p><p>“I think Gansey’s right, it’s good to try new beers, and to support a small local business,” Adam says. Ronan sends him another string of question marks, but it’s ages before another text comes through. Adam types the whole time, and Ronan hopes it’s because the message is going to be long and dirty, and not because he doesn’t know what to say.</p><p>And then his phone buzzes. Ronan feels his eyes bulge at the paragraph of text on the screen.</p><p>
  <em>A: Been thinking about it for a long time. You’ve got such a nice ass, wanted to put my mouth on it for so long. I wanna get you wet with my tongue, tease you and make you really desperate before I even put one finger in you. I’ve thought about it so much, the sounds you’re gonna make when I spread you open, how badly you’ll want my cock by the time I’m done licking you, getting you so wet. You’ll be so hard for me. Do you want that?</em>
</p><p>Ronan swallows and looks up from his phone. Adam is staring fixedly out the window, watching people come down the ski run. The tips of his ears are burning red, like a beacon. Ronan’s mouth is dry, so he takes a huge drink of his beer. He doesn’t even register whether it’s a good beer or not.</p><p>“I’m gonna go to bathroom,” he says, garbling his words. He’s swinging off the seat quickly and almost tripping as he pushes through the crowd to the bathroom, and so almost misses that Adam is following him. Almost.</p><p>At the door to the bathrooms, he stops Adam with a hand on his chest. “Don’t you think they’ll notice?”</p><p>“Relax, they’re too busy arguing about beer.” Adam kisses his neck and wraps his arms around Ronan. “We won’t be gone long.”</p><p>Ronan laughs, and lets Adam push him back into the bathroom. It’s blessedly empty and he drags Adam into a stall, and kisses him hard, pushing him back against the locked door.</p><p>“To answer your fucking inappropriate text,” Ronan says, between kisses hot enough to melt the snow. “Yes, I want that. Very, very much.”</p><p>“Good,” Adam says, kissing back just as fervently.</p><p>Adam sucks Ronan’s bottom lip into his mouth and bites down softly on it. Ronan’s been hard since Adam’s text, and now he’s about ready to just say <em>fuck it</em> and get Adam to come back to the cabin with him.</p><p>“Time’s up,” Adam says.</p><p>Ronan groans and slumps against the wall. “Can’t we just tell them? There’s only three days left.”</p><p>Adam grins. “But aren’t you having fun? Sneaking around?” He kisses Ronan’s jaw, and then bites, sucking lightly at first, and then harder. “Maybe we just… stop making it hard for them to set us up, and stop pretending there’s nothing here?”</p><p>“There’s something here?” Ronan groans at little as Adam bites at his jaw some more.</p><p>“Yeah, I can feel it pressing into my hip.”</p><p>Ronan snorts. “I don’t want those fuckers to take credit for us getting together.”</p><p>“Fuck that, they’d do that anyway. Even if we’d told them as soon as it happened, they would say it was because of them.”</p><p>Ronan kisses Adam one more time, and then follows him out of the bathroom.</p><p>*</p><p>Ronan has a hickey. Blue can’t stop noticing it. It’s right there, it’s right on the corner of his jaw and there’s no way it’s anything but a hickey. There are fucking teeth marks in it.</p><p>Adam catches her looking. Blue wants to call him out on it, ask him if he knows how the fuck Ronan got teeth marks in his neck, but she doesn’t.</p><p>She grabs Henry instead, as soon as they’re back in the cabin. She drags him into the room she shares with Gansey, ignoring the confused looks she’s getting from the other boys.</p><p>“Have you seen it?” she hisses, once the door is closed behind her.</p><p>“Seen what? That huge hickey on Lynch’s jaw. I think <em>everyone’s </em>seen that. They’re talking about that thing on the ISS.”</p><p>Blue laughs. “I know! It has to be from Adam. Who else would do that?”</p><p>“But why? Unless they… hooked up today?”</p><p>“Hooked up where? In the bathroom at the ski slope? No, they’re fucking with us. They found out about Operation Last Christmas, and now, they’re fucking with us.” Blue’s so sure of this. If Adam and Ronan had got together without telling them, they wouldn’t have left marks.</p><p>Henry nods. “It has to be. But how did they find out?”</p><p>“Someone told,” Blue says. Her tone is grave, even really this is all a big joke and they both know it. “Go get Gansey and Noah.”</p><p> </p><p>“So which one of you told Lynch and Parrish about operation Last Christmas?” Henry asks, folding his arms and raising an eyebrow. Blue wonders if he’s trying to go for some kind of good cop, bad cop thing. If so, he’s trying for the wrong role.</p><p>“I wouldn’t tell them, <em>because there is no operation,” </em>Gansey says. “I thought you weren’t doing this! Why do you think they know?”</p><p>“Did you not see the hickey?” Henry says.</p><p>“Ah, that,” Gansey says. It’s confirmation of how obvious the mark is, if Gansey’s noticed it.</p><p>Noah hasn’t said anything yet. He seems overly interested in the pattern on the bedsheets.</p><p>“Noah?” Blue asks, dragging the syllables of his name out. “Have you said anything to them?”</p><p>Noah scoffs. “Really Blue, why would I say anything about your plans?” He’s a worse liar than Ronan sometimes.</p><p>“Noah,” Blue says again, warning.</p><p>“You set them up on that date! They were suspicious! Adam kept asking me about Henry’s ankle! It’s not like you guys have been subtle about it!”</p><p>Blue strokes her lip with her thumb. “When did you tell them?” It’s not until Noah raises his pale eyebrows at her before he answers, that she realises the little Gansey habit that she’s copying.</p><p>“This morning,” he admits. “I cracked, I told Ronan. I’m sorry.”</p><p>“And then what, he told Adam and they decided the best revenge was to…  give Ronan a hickey?” Henry looks puzzled. Blue’s not though, It’s exactly the kind of bizarre revenge that they’d both find hilarious. They’re probably in their room right now, cracking up about their stupid, stupid revenge.</p><p>“I knew this would happen,” Gansey says. “I knew there would be some sort of chaos because you can’t leave them alone and now your meddling has got them pretending to be in a relationship!”</p><p>Blue tries to look ashamed, but she catches Henry’s eye and he’s trying to stop himself from laughing. When they make eye contact, they’re both laughing.</p><p>Gansey breaths out a swear. “Fix this, you two,” he says, and he leaves the room.</p><p>*</p><p>“What are you doing?” Ronan asks, leaning against the wall in their room, as Adam slides down his body.</p><p>“Hmm, what does it look like I’m doing?” Adam kneels on the floor in front of Ronan. He can see how hard Ronan is, straining against the fabric of his briefs, can see the wet patch that’s forming at the head.</p><p>Adam can feel his face burning as he looks up at Ronan and says, “Teach me.”</p><p>“What? You know how to—”</p><p>“I do. Just, tell me how you want it,” Adam clarifies. “Teach me how to do it how you like it.”</p><p>“Shit, Adam.”</p><p>“Please?” Adam kisses the head of Ronan’s cock through the fabric. He wraps his fingers around the waistband of Ronan’s underwear, and when his knuckles brush Ronan’s stomach, he can feel Ronan’s muscles twitch.</p><p>“Okay, I can do that.” Ronan’s own hands scramble to pull his briefs down and pull his cock out. “Wrap your hand around the base.”</p><p>Adam does.</p><p>“Just lick the head a little, get it wet.” Ronan’s already breathing hard, he gasps when Adam’s tongue swirls around the head of his cock. “Oh God, Adam.”</p><p>Adam looks up. Ronan’s dark eyes meet his. Adam just keeps on licking over the head, not moving on until Ronan tells him to.</p><p>“Will you—” Ronan begins to ask. Adam looks meaningfully up at him, tries to remind him what he’d asked for without repeating it. “Put your mouth on my balls,” Ronan says, and it’s not a question.</p><p>Adam’s tongue slides down the side of his cock, and he licks all around the base, down to where Ronan’s balls hang heavy between his legs. He takes one in his mouth, sucks at it, lightly. Ronan groans, higher and more desperate than Adam’s heard him before.</p><p>“Fuck, get it all fucking wet. Just yeah, keep licking, like that.”</p><p>Ronan wraps his own hand around the base of his cock, and he puts the fingers of his free hand on Adam’s jaw. Adam feels him push slightly and he realises Ronan is guiding his mouth back up to the head of his cock. Adam sighs softly, and Ronan strokes his face, as his lips wrap back around the head of his cock.</p><p>“Yeah, just like that. Cover your teeth.”</p><p>Adam resists the temptation to roll his eyes. He’d asked for this, wanted it. Wants it still, especially when Ronan says, “Suck,” and his brain shorts out.</p><p>He takes more of Ronan’s cock into his mouth, slides his tongue against it, sucks on it. Ronan moves his hand away from the base, and Adam replaces it with his own, squeezing.</p><p>Ronan runs his fingers through Adam’s hair, not pulling, but present. The feeling of it makes Adam moan. He wants to take Ronan deeper into his mouth, wants to swallow all of his cock into his throat, but Ronan hasn’t said to yet, so all Adam can do is wait.</p><p>“Fuck, more, you can take more of it,” Ronan says, roughly. “That’s so good,” he says, as Adam sucks more of his cock into his mouth. “Move your hand too, just jerk it a bit, what you can’t fit in your mouth.”</p><p>Adam moves his hand completely off, he wants to show Ronan that he knows how to do this, that he can take more of his cock. He wraps it around Ronan’s hip instead.</p><p>“Don’t choke,” Ronan warns.</p><p>Adam flicks his eyes up to Ronan’s face. He pulls off his cock enough to say, “Wasn’t gonna.”</p><p>“Because you’re good at this too, yeah? Good at everything you do.”</p><p>Adam nods, and takes Ronan’s cock back into his mouth. He takes him all the way in, until he can swallow around the head, careful not to gag or choke. Ronan’s hand tightens on the back of his neck, and above him, Adam can hear Ronan breathing hard.</p><p>“I want to fuck your mouth, Adam. Can I? Can I do that?” Ronan draws his cock all the way out, wraps his own hand around the base.</p><p>Adam nods. “Tell me how,” he says, and his lips brush the wet tip of Ronan’s cock when he speaks. Adam can feel his own cock, hard and wet in his boxers. He wants to reach down and jerk himself off to this, to this view of Ronan standing over him, hard cock, flushed red all down his chest, dark eyes watching him.</p><p>“Open your mouth,” Ronan says. “Relax your throat.” His cock rubs wetly across Adam’s tongue, just teasing at first. Next time, Adam sucks a little more, tries to draw Ronan in deeper. Ronan moans again, and thrusts in faster, further. It’s wet and slick, and every time he pushes back in, he goes a little deeper</p><p>Adam’s going to be thinking about this for a long time. He reaches his hand into his boxers and pulls his own cock out, wraps his hand around it in a tight grip. There’s pre-cum gathered on the head of it, and Adam swipes his thumb through it without looking down, uses it to ease the friction as he moves his hand slowly on his own dick.</p><p>“Oh fuck, yeah. Touch yourself,” Ronan says, and he sounds even more turned on by the view of Adam’s hand around his own cock than he is by Adam’s mouth on his.</p><p>He just focuses on that, on keeping his mouth open, his throat relaxed, ready for Ronan to take what he wants. Adam takes a breath in and lets Ronan hold him in place, his nose pressed against Ronan’s pelvic bone and his cock filling his mouth.</p><p>“You love this,” Ronan tells him, as he lets him back up to catch his breath. “Didn’t think I could get you to go to your knees for me, like this. But here you are.”</p><p>Adam breathes in shakily, his eyes are wet, and his throat is beginning to protest, but he wants more. “Please,” he breathes.</p><p>“God, fuck, Adam. You’re doing so well. Is that it? Is that what you want me to tell you?” Ronan asks, his voice deep, and so turned on.</p><p>Adam groans, hopes it conveys to Ronan that <em>yes, that’s what he wants. </em>He’s so close to coming, but he doesn’t want this to be over, not yet.</p><p>“Keep touching yourself. I want you to come, wanna see you come with my cock in your mouth. I just want you to feel good, wanna give you whatever you want. You’re so good at this, Adam.”</p><p>As much as he wants this to go on endlessly, Adam can’t deny Ronan. He comes. He catches most of it in his hand, but some of it drips onto the floor. He almost does choke on Ronan’s cock, but Ronan pulls out.</p><p>“Where can I come? Tell me, tell me I can come on your face, please Adam.” Ronan’s frantic, and his hand is blur across his spit-slicked cock.</p><p>Adam nods. There’s nothing that Ronan could ask him for right now that he wouldn’t willingly give. “Please,” he says again, not even sure why he’s asking. He opens his mouth for it, and when Ronan comes, most of it hits his mouth, his lips and his cheeks. Hot drops run down his chin, and Adam feels like he could come again already.</p><p>“Fuck,” Ronan says, collapsing back against the wall.</p><p>“Fuck,” Adam agrees. “There’s come on the carpet.”</p><p>“There’s come on your face.”</p><p>Adam raises an eyebrow, unimpressed and wipes his face off on Ronan’s discarded t-shirt. “I’ll find some stain remover or something.”</p><p>*</p><p>“What are you looking for?” Blue asks. Adam is crouched down by the sink, rummaging through the cleaning supplies stored down there.</p><p>“Uhh, stain remover.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Ronan. Dumbass spilt my coffee on the floor in our room.”</p><p>*</p><p>“I just don’t think they’re ready to go off piste yet,” Gansey says, as they load skis and boards into the car. It’s the last day of skiing, and if they don’t go off-piste today, Ronan’s going to have to wait until the next time he can convince Adam to take a vacation with him.</p><p>“They’ll be fine. Learning by exposure. We won’t go far from the piste and we’ll stay on the trail.”</p><p>“Promise?”</p><p>“You need to live a little. Relax. What happened to the Gansey who skied onto that road?”</p><p>Gansey laughs at the memory. “That was a fun day.”</p><p>“You’re always saying you want to make fun memories with Sargent.”</p><p>“I—” Gansey narrows his eyes shrewdly at Ronan. “What is with you?”</p><p>“I don’t know what you mean.”</p><p>“I don’t know either, you just seem different, the last few days.”</p><p>Ronan shrugs. He thinks about telling Gansey about Adam. Gansey wouldn’t be anything but happy for them, he knows. In fact, Gansey would probably be overwhelmingly and unbearably happy. And then there’d be a million and one questions and suddenly the small, private thing he’s sharing with Adam is a big fucking deal that everyone knows about. At the moment, the secret is nice. It’s good actually, to have a secret from Gansey that he’s not ashamed of.</p><p>“You’re really going to snowboard today instead of ski?” Gansey asks, interrupting Ronan’s contemplation. The car’s all loaded up now, and Ronan leans against the driver’s side door, while Gansey walks around the car, checking fuck knows what.</p><p>“It’s more fun.”</p><p>“You’ll be miserable if you get stuck somewhere flat.”</p><p>“That’s miserable anyway, even if I was skiing. I’ll get you or Parrish to pull me out.”</p><p>Gansey frowns at him and hip checks him away from the car door. “Pulling people out of holes and off of flat parts is exactly what I’m worried will happen.”</p><p>Ronan rolls his eyes, and gets in the car.</p><p>*</p><p>“Ronan,” Gansey says and it’s his tone of voice that lets Ronan know that he’s in trouble, because Gansey has noticed. Noticed that, “We’re not on the trail anymore.”</p><p>“Are we not?” Ronan says, faking innocence. “I must’ve taken a wrong turn back there.”</p><p>He did no such thing. This is exactly where he intended to be. Up ahead, there’s a gentle downward slope, just before a copse of trees. Ronan knows the trail is just on the other side of it. He also knows that there’s quite a steep drop down to the trail, but that’s part of the adventure.</p><p>“We’ll get back on it,” he tells Gansey. “It’s just through those trees.”</p><p>There’s a whoop from up the hill behind them, and Noah comes flying down the hill, snow spraying up behind him. He’s got enough speed up that when he hits the edge of the slope, he jumps down it, flying more than boarding. Ronan watches him weave through the trees ahead of them, and then there’s another whoop that means Noah’s landed back on the trail.</p><p>“Just follow where Noah went,” Gansey says to Blue, who’s looking with scepticism at the tree line.</p><p>“And don’t ski into any trees,” Ronan adds. He’s a great instructor, full of helpful advice.</p><p>Gansey moves off first and he carves perfect parallel arcs into the deep, white powder. Adam grins at him and skis off after Gansey. He’s less confident and he wobbles a couple of times, but Ronan watches him go and takes a moment to appreciate it. Appreciate that yeah, he taught Adam to <em>ski </em>and it’s only been six days, but damn he looks good doing it.</p><p>“After you,” Blue says. Ronan jumps awkwardly to shake some of the snow off his board and get himself moving, but then he’s flying through the powder as well.</p><p>He slows as he reaches the trees, and turns back to check Blue made it. Henry’s gone a different way higher up the slope, but he’s there too.</p><p>Ahead, there’s a dip in the snow, at the base of a tree. It’s wide, but Ronan knows that if anyone goes in it, the snow is deep enough that it’ll be a bitch to get them out again. It’s probably a small stream or something.</p><p>Adam’s just ahead of him and he’s approaching it, too busy trying not to get tangled in the overhanging branches to notice the hole.</p><p>“Don’t fall in that hole, Parrish. You’ll never get out,” Ronan warns.</p><p>Adam falls in the hole.</p><p>“Fuck.”</p><p>“Ronan, help me,” Adam says, but he’s laughing. He’s landed in the hole upside down, head at the bottom and his skis sticking comically up in the air.</p><p>“You got yourself in there, you can get yourself out.” Every time Adam moves to free himself, more snow piles on top of him. Ronan’s going to have to dig him out. Fuck.</p><p>“But it’s deep!” Adam twists around trying to free his skis and get them underneath himself. His right arm sinks in and in under the snow. “Oh shit, there’s water down here.” The part of his face that Ronan can see is creased with mirth.</p><p>“Yeah, it’s called a stream, dumbass. It’s why I told you not to go in there.”</p><p>Blue comes hurtling through the trees then and she crashes into Ronan’s back. Ronan gets a firm grip on her coat before she goes tumbling down next to Adam.</p><p>“What’s happened here?” she says, giggling at the sight of Adam trying fruitlessly to dig himself out. He’d be having a lot more success, Ronan thinks, if he weren’t laughing hysterically at the situation.</p><p>“Blue come on, just go around Ronan,” Gansey says from ahead of him. Henry skis around the other side of the tree next to the hole Adam is in.</p><p>Blue shuffles very slowly uphill and around the top of Ronan. In doing so, she causes a tiny avalanche that buries Adam in the hole even more.</p><p>“Helpful. Thank you,” Ronan tells her.</p><p>“You’re welcome,” she says, smiling faux-sweetly. Ronan flips her off as she skis away.</p><p>Ronan looks back down at where Adam has rolled onto his side, head still at the bottom of the hole. “Don’t tell me that you did this on purpose so we could have <em>alone time,”</em> Ronan accuses.</p><p>“This is not my idea of the kind of alone time I would like,” Adam replies. He’s managed to dig one ski out of the hole, and he unclips it and throws it up at Ronan.</p><p>“Now what are you gonna do, Einstein?”</p><p>“I’m—They’ve left us.”</p><p>“Well spotted.”</p><p>“What do they think is gonna happen? You pull me out of this stream and then I confess my undying love for you?”</p><p>“If that isn’t what’s gonna happen, then I’m leaving you in the stream.”</p><p>The snow on the banks of the stream is deep and when Adam tries to stand in it to climb out, his foot sinks all the way in, up to his knees and he ends up back where he started.</p><p>“We’re going to have to carve out some steps.”</p><p>“Or I could just pull you out.”</p><p>“I know you like to think you’re super strong, but there are limitations.”</p><p>Ronan bends down and undoes the bindings around his feet. “Give me your other ski.”</p><p>“It’s kind of stuck,” Adam replies.</p><p>“How can it be stuck? It’s still on your foot isn’t it?”</p><p>“Yes, but my foot is stuck. There’s too much snow on it. I seem to have dug myself in, in my efforts to get out.”</p><p>“Parrish, I swear to God, if I have to get in that hole as well… Where is the ski?”</p><p>“When I fell in, a lot of snow came down on top of it and it’s sort of, in the bank?”</p><p>Ronan sighs. It takes a lot of effort from both of them, but eventually he manages to pull Adam up so he’s standing on the one foot that still has a ski on it, even if it is stuck in the snowbank.</p><p>Ronan really is going to have to dig him out. Luckily, he’s snowboarding today, so he’s got a wide surface area to kneel on. Eventually, the ski is free and Adam shuffles, one legged, away from the hole and towards where Ronan has thrown his other ski.</p><p>Adam pulls the ski out of the snow, then compacts it down enough so he’s got something solid to push into when he puts the ski back on. By the time Ronan’s strapped his feet back onto his board, Adam’s ready to go.</p><p>“Haven’t you got something you’d like to say to me?” Ronan says, as he slides past Adam.</p><p>“Thank you for rescuing me, you’re my hero,” Adam deadpans.</p><p>“It’s fine. You can show your appreciation later.”</p><p>“Like I did the other night?” Adam says, grinning.</p><p>Ronan swallows. “Oh yeah, for sure.”</p><p>*</p><p>In the restaurant at lunch, Blue watches as Ronan throws his arm across the back of the booth behind Adam, as Adam leans slightly into it. It’s not unusual, the movement, but Blue wonders if it’s part of the game they think they’re playing.</p><p>Adam looks back at her, and he raises an eyebrow, challenging her to say something. She doesn’t, she just sips her hot chocolate and narrows her eyes, still watching them.</p><p>Adam tips his chin at her, then leans more firmly into Ronan. Ronan briefly breaks from his conversation with Gansey to grin at him, and then his arm drops from the back of the booth onto Adam’s shoulders.</p><p>Blue wants to call them out. She wants to bang her hand on the table and demand an answer, and the little smirk playing on Adam’s face is daring her to.</p><p>Her vegan macaroni and cheese lands in front of her, and for a moment they’re all distracted by the food. It’s salty, cheesy goodness and the smell of it has her salivating before she’s even taken a bite. Skiing off-piste was hard work, and Blue is starving. She’s so distracted by her food, she almost misses Adam lean into Ronan, and whisper something in his ear.</p><p>Ronan laughs, at what Adam said, or at her, she can’t tell. He takes some fries off Adam’s plate, even though his own are right there and it’s that action that finally does it.</p><p>“What the fuck is going on?” she snaps, dropping her fork to the table with a clatter. At the other end of the table, Noah, Henry, and Gansey look at her in surprise.</p><p>“What doing you mean, Blue?” Adam asks, innocently. He takes one of Ronan’s chicken wings.</p><p>“You two,” she says. “You’re up to something.”</p><p>“Oh, we’re not the ones who are up to something,” Adam replies and if Blue didn’t already know that they know about operation Last Christmas, that would have cemented it for her.</p><p>She glares at him. Adam glares back. She is getting worried that Gansey’s right, and she and Henry have inadvertently sabotaged Ronan and Adam.</p><p>“Ronan,” Gansey says, loudly. “Should we head somewhere else for this afternoon? Something fun and relaxing for the last afternoon of skiing?”</p><p>“Somewhere with a decent après ski bar,” Ronan says. “Or just back to the town we’re staying in, find a bar there.”</p><p>“Yes!” Henry shouts. “Final blow out!”</p><p>Ronan whispers something to Adam again then, and these secrets are really getting to Blue. Tomorrow, it’s all coming out, and Blue will own up to any mistakes she’s made. Maybe.</p><p>*</p><p>The apres-ski bar they go to, down in the town near the cabin, is loud, packed with people and flashing multi coloured lights. There’s cheesy pop playing over the speakers and people are shouting to be heard over the sound.</p><p>Ronan leads the way, weaving through the crowd and Adam uses this as an excuse to touch him. He reaches out to Ronan, and Ronan grabs his hand and locks their fingers together. He pushes through the press of people to a free table at the back. He doesn’t let go of Adam’s hand, only releasing it just in time for the others to arrive. Adam’s sure at least Blue noticed.</p><p>It's a little quieter over here, away from the bar. Adam collapses down onto the bench seat, and groans when he loosens the bindings on his ski boots.</p><p>Ronan sits on one side of him, and Gansey on the other. He feels exhausted and if he could right now, he’d happily rest his head on Ronan’s shoulder and go to sleep. But.</p><p>“Drinks?” Henry asks, excitedly. “Shots? I’m not going on my own!”</p><p>“I’ll come,” Ronan says. “Beer, Parrish?”</p><p>Adam’s sure it’ll make him sleepier, but why not. “Sure,” he says. He’s also pretty sure that if he drinks too much, he’ll forget that the others don’t know about him and Ronan yet. It’s the last night, it doesn’t matter anymore, he reasons.</p><p>After Ronan, Henry and Blue have left on their quest for drinks, and Noah’s gone to find the bathroom, Gansey turns to Adam ominously.</p><p>“I wanted to talk to you about Ronan,” he begins. Adam groans internally. Adam’s lost count of the number of times Gansey’s started a conversation with him like that, over the years. Adam humours him. He knows Gansey still looks at Ronan sometimes and sees that self-destructive teenager. “I know you guys have got… history. And I don’t pretend to understand everything that’s going on there. I just want you both to be happy. And so do the others.”</p><p>Adam sighs. Gansey must know about Blue and Henry’s plans. That’s what this conversation is about really. “Gansey, it’s <em>fine</em>.” He tries to put the right amount of emphasis into his words and make the right facial expressions to convey to Gansey just how fine it is. “We’re all good. You really don’t need to worry.”</p><p>“It’s just that Blue said you’d given up on trying to make a relationship with him work.”</p><p><em>Fuck, </em>clearly Adam cannot have any secrets. “I think Blue might have misunderstood.”</p><p>“She said you were over him.”</p><p>“That implies that I was—” Adam stops, because Noah’s back at the table, and he can see the others heading back towards them too. “We can talk about this later.”</p><p>Ronan sits back next to him and passes Adam his beer.</p><p>“We have to tell them, tonight, yeah?” Adam murmurs to Ronan. Ronan nods,</p><p>“Shots!” Henry shouts.</p><p>“What did you get?” Gansey asks.</p><p>“Schnapps!”</p><p>“Yeah, we will,” Ronan replies, as Henry passes around the tray of drinks. It can’t hurt, Adam thinks, to have a bit of liquid courage before they tell everyone about the relationship.</p><p>*</p><p>They should’ve done this way earlier, Blue thinks. She’s four shots and two beers down, and she’s really feeling it, but she isn’t the only one. Henry keeps bringing back more trays of schnapps and the flavours get weirder every time. At this point, she’s not sure whether he’s making them up or not. There’s no way they make spearmint toothpaste flavoured schnapps, but that’s what Henry declares the new tray of shots to be. The shot definitely tastes minty, at least.</p><p>She watches Adam and Ronan lean more and more into each other, watches them whispering to each other and laughing at whatever the other one of them just said. When Ronan sloppily kisses the side of Adam’s head, she feels like she needs to silence the music and declare to the entire bar that she is indeed the Queen of Good Ideas.</p><p>She tells Henry as much, but he hadn’t seen the kiss, too busy making up schnapps flavours to care about operation Last Christmas anymore.</p><p>Gansey’s noticed though, and he looks concerned. She leans over to him, almost climbs into his lap, but she’s not drunk enough for that.</p><p>“Gansey,” she says, stroking his hair back from his face. “They’re fine, they’re good. This is good. I’m the Queen of Good Ideas.”</p><p>“You’re the Queen of too many shots, not enough dinner,” Gansey tells her, but he smiles fondly at her and kisses the palm of her hand where it’s resting on his face. “I hope you’ve had a good vacation.”</p><p>“I have,” she tells him. The alcohol is making her feel earnest. “It’s been the best and I love you and I love my boys and I love that I have the best ideas.”</p><p>“You have some—Oh Jesus Christ.” Gansey’s got distracted by something happening over Blue’s shoulder and he looks incredibly distressed at what he sees.</p><p>Blue turns around so she can see it too, and yeah. Adam and Ronan are full on making out on the bench seat, pushed back against the back wall of the bar. It is actually a little distressing for Blue to watch as well, so she turns back to Gansey, and tries to distract him.</p><p>She can’t think of anything to say, and when Gansey looks at her, the same distressed expression, she breaks, laughing uproariously.</p><p>“We should… give them some privacy?” he says.</p><p>“They should give themselves some privacy,” Henry says, and he sounds like he finds the situation just as funny as Blue does. “Hey, assholes, get a room!”</p><p>Adam turns around at that. “We have one!” he laughs</p><p>“Use it,” Noah says, giggling at them.</p><p>They’re all laughing and they’re all happy, and fuck yeah, this is the best vacation Blue’s been on.</p><p>*</p><p>Adam’s definitely drunk. He’s definitely drunk and he also definitely shouldn’t be touching Ronan right now, but he can’t remember why.</p><p>He doesn’t mean to be so clingy, not in public, but he’s got one leg tangled with Ronan’s and he was definitely making out with him a minute ago. It was a bad idea, Adam knows that, but he’s had enough to drink now that the <em>why</em> of the bad idea doesn’t seem important.</p><p>Ronan’s drunk too and when they stumble out into the cold, he throws an arm around Adam’s shoulders and pulls him in. Adam laughs when Ronan presses a wet kiss to the side of his head. It’s not a bad idea, it’s <em>Ronan.</em> He’s allowed to kiss Ronan, he’s allowed to kiss Ronan as much as he likes, because Ronan will like it too. Adam doesn’t even realise that he’s being backed against a wall until he feels the cold brick through his coat.</p><p>His hands fist in Ronan’s coat and he kisses and kisses him, again and again, uncaring of where they are and who might see.</p><p>Ronan stops kissing him suddenly, and that’s when Adam realises that they’ve got an audience. Blue and Henry are whooping and applauding, a few metres away.</p><p>“I am the Queen of Good Ideas!” Blue shouts, her voice echoing down the street.</p><p>“Shit,” Adam says.</p><p>“Ahh fuck it, they were gonna find out anyway. Or did they already know? Does it matter?” Ronan says, and his hands are sneaking under Adam’s layers. It’s giving Adam his own good ideas.</p><p>“I have no idea. Did we already tell them?” He can’t remember. He kissed Ronan in the bar, and he thinks that they all saw that.</p><p>“Fuck it though,” Ronan says and kisses him again.</p><p>They stumble back up the hill with the others. It’s starting to snow again, and it’s so calming, quiet and pretty under the sparse streetlights. Adam thinks he should probably feel cold, but he’s so deliriously happy and the combination of that and the alcohol pumping in his blood keeps him warm all the way back to the cabin, back into the bed he shares with Ronan.</p><p>*</p><p>“We have to tell you something,” Adam says. He’s hungover. He’s pretty sure they’re all hungover, gathered on the couches in the living room of the cabin. They’ve paused in their weary packing, mostly because it was challenging, trying to tidy their things around the neon elephant in the room.</p><p>“You hooked up last night!” Blue says, excitedly. She’s nursing a tea, and she’s undoubtedly got the most energy of anyone this morning, with the exception of Noah.</p><p>“Um, no,” Adam says.</p><p>“Uhh yes we did,” Ronan argues.</p><p>“Oh that was a hook up was it? I see how it is,” Adam says, turning on Ronan.</p><p>Ronan rolls his eyes. “Well what would you call it then?”</p><p>“How about a <em>relationship</em>?” Adam’s too tired for this. Too hungover for this.</p><p>“Oh my goodness!” Gansey was already perched precariously on the arm of the couch, and now it looks like he might fall right off. </p><p>“Since last night?” Blue says, and she still looks excited. </p><p>“Since two weeks ago,” Adam corrects her. Her jaw drops and Adam suddenly feels mean. Having people so invested in his relationship and his happiness isn’t a new thing anymore, but such clear reminders are jarring</p><p>“Why didn’t you say anything?” Gansey sounds hurt, and Adam okay yeah, he feels like an asshole. He also feels stupid, for not considering that of course his best friends care about his relationship with their other best friend, and not in an ‘<em>isn’t this hilarious gossip’</em> kind of way. He’s starting to feel as guilty as Ronan looks.</p><p>“How did it happen?” Blue asks, and then she narrows her eyes a little, skeptical, like she thinks maybe they’re lying to save face.</p><p>“How’s the sex?”</p><p>“What the fuck, Henry?” Adam says.</p><p>“This. This is why we didn’t tell you,” Ronan says, pointing accusatory at Henry. “Also, that whole secret set-up you guys were trying.”</p><p>“I told you that was a bad idea!” Gansey insists. “I said that you should just leave them to come together on their own, and I was right!”</p><p>“Well, actually, because they were already together, there’s no way to prove whether it would’ve worked or not,” Henry says.</p><p>“It wouldn’t have,” Ronan says, but Adam’s not so sure he should say it with such confidence. </p><p>“So what was that whole fight about then?” Blue says. “You told me you’d given up!”</p><p>“The fight was fake,” Adam says.</p><p>“Half fake,” Ronan adds, sounding disgruntled. </p><p>Adam winces. “Alright, half fake. But that’s because we found out about your plan and we wanted to fuck with you guys.”</p><p>“But… the hickey?”</p><p>“That was when we decided we didn’t care about you not knowing anymore.”</p><p>“So let me get this straight,” Blue says. She sounds like she doesn’t know whether she finds this hilarious, or irritating. “You guys get together and then decide not to tell anyone, but you pester Noah about why we were set you up on a date?”</p><p>“That’s not how Noah found out,” Ronan says, grinning, and Adam almost slaps a hand over his mouth. There is no need to relive that.</p><p>“Noah already knew? And you didn’t tell me! But we’re roomies!” Henry cries.</p><p>Noah’s only answer is an anguished scream into his hands. Adam is about ready to do the same, especially when--</p><p>“He walked in on us,” Ronan says. Noah makes the anguished noise again.</p><p>“Nope. No, no. We do <em>not </em>need to go into that. We’re forgetting it ever happened,” Adam says.</p><p>“I wish I could,” Noah says, pitifully.</p><p>“Oh my God, what did you see?” Henry asks.</p><p>“Do not answer that.” </p><p>“Look, this doesn’t answer the question of why you didn’t tell us?” Blue’s verging on annoyed. Adam thinks it’s a bit rich, she and Gansey were dating for weeks before they’d decided to tell him.</p><p>“We didn’t want to tell you, because…” Adam begins. He’s not sure where to go from there though.</p><p>“Because we wanted to be sure it was going to work out.” Ronan picks up for him. “It’s a big deal. To us, and clearly to you lot as well.”</p><p>“We’re happy for you both. We really are,” Gansey says. “And I get why you didn’t say anything.”</p><p>Adam nods. He’s glad that the truth is out, finally. It’s better like this, he doesn’t have stop himself leaning in when Ronan throws his arm around Adam’s shoulder.</p><p>“So, do we make this an annual thing?” Gansey asks.</p><p>“What? Scheming to set our friends up?” Blue says. “I think we’ll run out of single friends before long.”</p><p>“And the ones you do have will get wind and not come,” Noah points out. </p><p>“How about it, Parrish,” Ronan says, low into Adam’s ear. “Do you think you’ll come skiing with me again?”</p><p>Adam screws up his nose. “I’ll think about it.”</p><p>“I’ll teach you to snowboard next time. You’ll like that.” No one’s paying attention to them anymore. They’re too busy bickering about whether this week is evidence of Blue and Henry’s matchmaking proficiency or not.</p><p>“The snowboarding, or the teaching? We’re not making this a thing, Lynch.”</p><p>“Hey, you’re the one who made it a thing.” He grins, smug. Adam sighs; he supposes he is.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I wrote a tiny, porny follow up to this fic <a href="https://behindtheatlantic.tumblr.com/post/646191370558652416/okay-i-finished-on-the-cold-and-calm-mountainside">on my tumblr!</a></p><p>Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it, let me know what you thought!!<br/>I'm on Tumblr at <a href="https://behindtheatlantic.tumblr.com">behindtheatlantic</a>!! Come say hi!!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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